Elzhana Popova
Elzhana Popova is a conceptual figurative painter who has exhibited in New York, Florida as well as Tbilisi, Georgia. Recent solo exhibitions include the Greenpoint Gallery in New York...
Elzhana Popova is a conceptual figurative painter who has exhibited in New York, Florida as well as Tbilisi, Georgia. Recent solo exhibitions include the Greenpoint Gallery in New York, Zazerkale-Art Space in Tbilisi, and Emporium Gallery in Lakeland, Florida. Collective exhibitions include the Greenpoint Gallery, and Easy-Art and International Festival of Contemporary Art Artisterium 16 in Tbilisi, Georgia. Elzhana describes her process as an artist by stating her “ideas are often born from events happening in the world around me, but I filter them through my own language — transforming emotions, poses, or fleeting situations into symbolic narratives. A single gesture, facial expression, or composition might become the starting point. From there, a full scene unfolds, blending reality with illusion”.
Heavily drenched in symbolism and dream-like mists of a classical sfumato atmosphere, Elzhana Popova reveals a dark reality of figures composed within tragic, isolated spaces. These compositions are not so much interiors, but rather black holes symbolically representing emptiness and the most remote parts of human psychology. She paints fast and usually in one sitting for 10 hours or less, expressing a realism based in impasto techniques and sense of urgency as well as improvisation. Elzhana’s figures typically interact with strategic objects, such as a balloon, or with other actors in solemn poses which seem to reflect a state of mourning and lingering, profound sorrow. As a refugee from Ukraine, these postures, both with objects and other figures, could be reflective of her reaction towards the death toll and destruction the war has brought to her native population.
In the paintings, we will often find monochromatic, mysterious, ominous backgrounds in black and white, sometimes followed by streaks or geometry of strategic placement of red. The red could symbolize a way of drawing attention towards a sensation of intensity, much like hot, glowing sun-like entities which reveal a sense of passion and focus upon the composition. Elzhana conveys mood through symbolic representations and carefully choreographed, theatrical presentations which can be described as poetic painting using a blend of urban iconography with classical figurative painting along with minimalist interior-like structures to portray the depths of individual identity and human psychology.
May (pictured above) could be described as one of Elzhana’s finest paintings because of the deep psychological implication of using a steel bar to both simultaneously separate and connect two figures. The young women sit nude in a mysterious space, not so much an interior, perhaps a geometric shadow, followed by scribbling on the walls of flowers. What we may find to be so fascinating would be the interaction between actors behind the cold steel of the bar. They sit so close and are both connected by holding the object yet remain separated by the linearity of the steel.
Elzhana Popova remains a promising young artist who reaches beyond conventional methods of figurative painting by incorporating urban abstractions, mysterious, isolated spaces which invoke interrogation-room-like interiors as well as dramatic lighting, intense painterly atmosphere, and a Baroque technical aesthetic. She offers the viewer a deeper understanding of emotional sensory experiences through successfully composed compositions which are as theatrical as they are mysterious, provoking, and haunting.
