ALINA Zamanova’s work exists at an apex of ugliness and beauty. She paints high-fashion abstractions of beautiful women: figures contorted into alien forms, swollen and skinny at once. Her practice is rooted in her studies in fashion illustration, and coloured by a fascination with the grotesque, cultivated by her time spent working at Alexander McQueen. The Ukrainian artist’s latest show, Inside Me, a collection of large-scale paintings and miniature sculptures, has opened virtually at Gillian Jason Gallery in London.
Alina Zamanova in her studio in Ukraine
The works in this exhibition function as projections of Zamanova’s exploration of her own body, while offering an examination of the bodily experiences of all of us. The scenes appear otherworldly. They push the boundaries of what can be considered a body: they are plasticised to a fantastical extreme of the figures that populate Instagram feeds, but are also empowering fleshy, strangely curvaceous and skeletal at once. Their limbs have an autonomy, a distinct visual identity of their own, that both elevates them beyond the status of bodily appendages, and renders them painted manifestations of the experience of embodied existence.
The mottled flesh of Jenny Saville’s work, and the chilled planes of Egon Schiele’s figures are written into the makeup of Zamanova’s paintings, but these are uniquely tempered by the slick line of Zamanoava’s fashion background.
Her sculptures offer an interesting translation of their streamlined painted counterparts. They are textured and earthy-toned, where the paintings are slick and cooly-coloured. Some suggest classical bronze works, heightened by a space-age, molten metallic glow. They are natural forms, Zamanova’s hand is present in their mouldings, and the deep colour palette fluctuates around their contours. As Zamanova puts it, they are sketches in 3-D.
The show’s fit-for-lockdown online exhibition offers a virtual walk through of a digital rendering of the gallery space; an experience that only heightens the experience of Zamonava’s simultaneously fantastical and hyper-real works.
In anticipation of the show’s opening, Glass spoke to Zamanova from her home in Ukraine.
Alina Zamanova, Glow, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2020
Could you start by describing the themes of your work?
As long as I can remember, I’ve always worked with a female form, and human bodies in general, and the game of the mind and thoughts. In 2014, I was studying at UAL, and I started to work on a dissertation with the title Representation of Ugliness and Beauty in Art and Fashion, and I think that’s where the whole ugly concept began to come together. I was fascinated to see how I could translate visually something that is abstract, for example a feeling or emotion.
You’ve cited Egon Schiele as one of your influences. Who else inspires your work?
First it was [Alexander] McQueen, he kind of built up my whole idea about what is grotesque, how to present art through fashion, and vice versa. I was working in a monochrome style [during my time at Alexander McQueen. So when I saw the exhibition of Egon Schiele in London in Somerset House, that’s where I was struck by the colour, so I thought, “This is where I’m going to explore body colours, different shapes of our faces, how we transform colour in different environments”. In nature more colours are exposed, if you are at the seaside, it’s different shapes, and different colours of your skin as well.
Then I found Jenny Saville‘s use of colour; it’s incredible. And the texture. She was a game-changer for me. She changed my perception of painting yourself, because I never purposely painted self portraits, I always used to translate more emotions instead of visual representation of my face or of my body. And then, after Jenny, different artists like George Condo inspires, and Parris Goebel [the choreographer of the Savage x Fenty shows].
I see fashion illustration as a practice that builds on quite traditional beauty standards, or at least a very specific image of skinny limbed and doe-eyed women. Is this a trope that you play with in your work? Or is it more that that’s how the emotions that you’re working with play out visually?
With fashion illustration, it was very challenging to use the body in the beginning. I didn’t have a flow at all, I couldn’t move around in the image, I couldn’t understand what the proportions of my character’s body were. In college, they didn’t teach us traditional fashion illustration, they did say it’s like a long, flat small torso, beautiful flow of the body, and skinny, but they encouraged us to find our own style pretty much.
After I graduated, when I came back home, I stepped away from fashion illustration a little bit. I wanted to focus on exploring more of the relationship between my mind and my body. And that’s where paintings started to come by, it just naturally happened, the figures started to grow.
When I see them I understand what other people are seeing, but it’s so interesting because when my hand goes to create a boob shape, or a shoulder shape, it just goes naturally, I don’t try to exaggerate it, but it comes out so exaggerated at the end. When I see a painting at the end, I just look at it like “What the hell”. It’s like a creature on it’s own. I see a person and I even sometimes see a few people, in love.
Alina Zamanova, Gossip Girl, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2020
You’ve highlighted your experience of life drawing at university as a moment of shift or release in the development your style.
The life drawings will be important all of my life, because that’s where very powerful, energetic movement comes from. So I had a class in university and I asked for black paper, and that’s where I started to experiment with materials. I didn’t have the style before. I was smudging with my fingers, with my hands, with the brush, with everything in front of me, I was bringing it all onto the paper. And that came from life drawing sessions.
Do you have a specific painting process?
Muses are important, I love to attribute to them. For this exhibition specifically, I did a very tiny sketch of an idea, I want to see how the body moves in the image. I like working, building up anticipation, like “Oh, what is going to be in that next painting?”, and then I work, I read, I watch movies, I watch documentaries, I just make a sketch, or I go to pottery and do a clay sculpture, then I come back. That’s where it happens, during the process of filling up my brain first.
I really like that idea of filling up the brain and then expelling it.
Me too!
Alina Zamanova, Together, ceramic, 2020
How do you see the relationship between your work and the digital world? Your pieces seem to toy with body types and beauty standards popularised on Instagram, and they translate digitally beautifully. Is there any consciousness of this Instagrammable nature in your work?
I think I started using Instagram as soon as it appeared, and it was a huge journey. I’ve met so many people there, like girl, I’ve met my best friends there! I do work sometimes to create content for the camera, and I think I’m kind of grateful for this, because otherwise I wouldn’t, for example, make mixed-media portraits if it was not for online collaborations. It’s a little bit like making art on top of their bodies.
Mixing together different media to explore different positions of the art world and fashion world. It looks good on Instagram for sure, this mixed media. It pushes boundaries.
You met one of your muses for this show, Michaela Stark, through Instagram. How did she inspire this body of work?
When she started embracing the fat rolls by exposing them on her body, she felt this kind of power and energy coming through, and I must say, when I’m painting now and I exaggerate a fat roll or a belly, spilling out the costume, it does feel much better. It is creating a story, creating an emotion, creating a memory for me. So we called the exhibition Inside Me. [The show is] not about me particularly, I think it’s about all of us, and what we feel, how we expose ourselves, how we connect to our alter egos.
My body will be behaving differently, my mind will be reacting differently. Like to remind ourselves and the audience that it’s fine to have these roles, that it’s better to kind of try to stay yourself most of the time, to be nice to your body, be nice to other people, don’t forget that we go through joy and struggle and pain. On a positive note, this exhibition, kind of explores that.
Alina Zamanova, Whenever You Need Me, acrylic on canvas, 2020
by Connie de Pelet
Inside Me is at Gillian Jason Gallery, and also online
All viewings are by appointment only. To arrange a visit please email here
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