Sanya Kantarovsky
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Biography
Born 1982 in Moscow, Russia
Lives and works in New York, NY
Sanya Kantarovsky works across mediums, including sculpture, animation and curation, with painting remaining at the center of his practice. Teeming with wry humor and unearthly narratives, Kantarovsky’s paintings propose scenarios of turmoil and investigate liminal spaces, physical proximities, affect, and cruelty. His sometimes delicate and often macabre subjects grapple with the confines of their bodies, interacting with one another in a painterly satire of status anxiety and existential crises.
The artist has recently been the subject of institutional solo shows at Aspen Art Museum, Kunsthalle Basel and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. His works have been presented in institutions such as Kunsthalle Zurich; Drawing Center, New York; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Baltic Triennial 13, Vilnius; Jewish Museum, New York and Sculpture Center, New York. Kantarovsky’s works are held in the permanent collections of Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA), Boston; ICA, Miami; Pinault Collection, Paris; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Moderna Museet, Stockholm among others.
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Sanya Kantarovsky is quintessentially a painter – someone who lives and breathes the materials, procedures, and heritage of the art. He’s someone who, according to the curator Elena Filipovic, “believes more in the utter necessity of painting than nearly anyone I’ve ever met.”
– Barry Schwabsky
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Works
Sanya Kantarovsky
Night prayer, 2023Oil and watercolor on linen80 x 60 cm
31.5 x 23.5 inchesB-SKANTAROVSKY-.23-0002'Night Prayer' depicts a praying humanoid figure, formally rendered somewhat characteristically of the work of Sanya Kantarovsky. Either awoken or unable to find solace in the night, the figure gazes..."Night Prayer" depicts a praying humanoid figure, formally rendered somewhat characteristically of the work of Sanya Kantarovsky. Either awoken or unable to find solace in the night, the figure gazes upward to what appears to be the moon. Their fleshy arms locked in prayer, the work radiates a certain ambiguity related to the depicted character’s peace of mind. They may be praying routinely or rather in a state of nocturnal distress and insomnia.
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