Exhibition of paintings and graphics by Svetlana Rodomanova "Meeting"

Today it seems impossible to talk about a creative project only from an aesthetic point of view: thanks to the influence of gender theory, modern art criticism has become more sensitive and invents new forms to describe the method, process, language of the artist or artist. To talk about the creative experience of another, you need to try to see this experience in a context - gender, social, personal and professional.

Sveta Rodomanova - artist, mother, wife, professional trainer. All these identities coexist in her in parallel, but the artist’s identity seems to break out of the list above. The female subject is woven into many social ties, responsibilities, motherhood practices, and daily care. The artist is free from all this. A creative act allows you to be who you want. Persistent and irresistible desire of Sveta to paint, smear paints, use any material that comes to hand: canvas, cardboard, rag, watercolor, gouache delights with its carelessness and inner freedom. The desire to get through the formal laws of painting to those where the rules do not exist is one of the artistic-sensual strategies that is characteristic of her work. <…>

<…> On the one hand, Sveta’s direct connection with bodily practices helps her to find the common between the body and the painting - a laid-back and sometimes violent shading, a wandering line, and a light touch with watercolors resemble the movements of free dance. On the other hand, the education received at the Institute of Physical Culture and the work of a coach are reflected in the peremptory nature of compositional decisions, the declarative nature of the statement at the level of model selection: a house wall, a window, ice on the Neva. What is hidden behind these images? Is it worth waiting for the wall to collapse, the window to open, and the ice floe to be carried away into the vast world of color, line, plane and all kinds of contrasts with even greater power and expression?

Svetlana’s picturesque works presented at the exhibition are a momentarily frozen process of creative living. This is a delicate and long process of stringing and embroidering one’s own subjectivity: the author slowly makes his way through all the conventions of form, awkwardness and revelation in order to find himself.

Svetlana Rodomanova was born in Leningrad in 1977.

She graduated from NSU. P.F. Lesgaft, candidate of pedagogical sciences. The main activity is a trainer-teacher. She began to paint under the guidance of Polina Zaslavskaya in 2013. In 2017, she organized a personal exhibition “Non-Exhibition” in the “Intimate Place” space (curated by Polina Zaslavskaya).

In 2017, she participated in the collective exhibition “Apartment 16”, in Vyborg, in the exhibition hall “Hermitage”.

Lives and works in St. Petersburg.