ELENA ZOLOTNITSKY: A CLOSE-UP

To pause amidst the chaotic tedium of daily routines and see the depths of meaning in the familiar we need a "freezeframe". To look closely we have to zoom in, to enter a special space where we can contemplate our existence, the connection of the internal and external, serenity and tension, the whole and its parts.

The artist Elena Zolotnitsky is not fond of details and particularities. She prefers to cease the moment and take a close-up. But the artist doesn?t simply stop the dynamic flow of reality. Her vision turns it into something monumental, revealing the significance of objects and situations regardless of their narrative. The objects of her paintings are alive, but she does not seek in them evidence of their uniqueness or the pulse of their vitality. Her portraits and still-lifes are taken out of context, time and space. She is interested not in individuals but in archetypes; not in the specific but in the essential. That is why in her paintings in a recognizable face of a modern woman we glimpse the image of an ancient Greek statue, and pears do not have the qualities of ripeness but suggest the constancy of form.

The artist is deconstructing images, peeling off layer after layer of the visual data in order to get to the emotional core of the portrayed. Zolotnitsky formulates her images by adjusting the colors, rhythm, texture and composition. That is why she doesn?t seek out new themes, but methodically studies the same subjects. At times she comes closer, at times distances herself; achieves absolute precision in her depiction and then steps back and drops her focus, smudging the contours.

She never stops experimenting, locating the same subject in different combinations of color and structure. This constancy of experimentation becomes the very essence of her creative endeavor. Beneath Elena Zolotnitsky's seemingly static art works there are hidden powerful emotions conveyed through saturated contrasting colors. The depth and volume of her vivid constructions are the leitmotif of her art and the very foundation of her artistic world where loneliness and fragility of the beauty are not reasons for melancholy. Just the opposite, the structure of life forms and steadiness of their inner core yield the feeling of the ever-lasting and ever-advancing being....One can hear the music of high mass and sense the perfection of the Universe which reveals itself in a single flower.

Galina Tuluzakova, Ph.D Art History
Expert in Nicolai Feshin and Contemporary Russian Art
Fulbright Scholar 2003
Deputy Director, The State Fine Arts Museum of
The Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan, Russia