I suppose my favourite contemporary artist would be a good place to start this blog. Alex Kanevsky’s paintings have, for me, something of the qualities of memories. Their ephemeral forms have mesmerising rhythm in their broken edges and vibration in their colour relationships. His work represents exactly the kind of direction I’m interested in seeing contemporary art take. It is visually captivating, taking influence from both classical naturalism and abstract expressionism, communicating a contemporary concept.
His work has been compared to Jenny Saville, for the use of paint. This is particularly evident in his large nudes. However, while Jenny Saville talks of painting with the paint as a kind of flesh that can be manipulated on a canvas, Alex Kanevsky seems to be less concerned with the physicality of his subject. By that I mean, one doesn’t feel so much the physical weight of a figure in one of his paintings, but more the atmospheric presence. It is like a mental image, flickering into existance momentarily, captured in paint. Distortions, uncertainties and all.
