Alex Kanevsky
Virtuoso painter Alex Kanevsky captures movement and time’s constant flow in canvases that resist adherence to a single moment, or even a single reading. Like the unreliable nature of memory and the imprecise atmosphere of poetry, Kanevsky’s multilayered works provide more questions than answers. These paintings combine abstraction and figuration in layered, painterly compositions in which the artist strives to convey his own personal and particular view of the world. This process produces compositions that shimmer with a kind of Futurist velocity, while at the same time capturing a serene feeling of stillness.
His figures inhabit mysterious landscapes and ambiguous architecture, often composed of wide swaths of color that contain echoes of color field painting. Most often, Kanevsky focuses on the nude, creating soft, tactile bodies in luscious flesh tones. His landscapes pulsate with alchemical energy, shifting between the recognizable world and pure form and color. Kanevsky describes himself as a slow painter who must nevertheless work quickly to maintain a fresh approach to the canvas. His process of painting, rubbing out, and painting over was developed over many years, and holds the key to the emotional richness of his work. This process creates a kind of palimpsest, in which …
Virtuoso painter Alex Kanevsky captures movement and time’s constant flow in canvases that resist adherence to a single moment, or even a single reading. Like the unreliable nature of memory and the imprecise atmosphere of poetry, Kanevsky’s multilayered works provide more questions than answers. These paintings combine abstraction and figuration in layered, painterly compositions in which the artist strives to convey his own personal and particular view of the world. This process produces compositions that shimmer with a kind of Futurist velocity, while at the same time capturing a serene feeling of stillness.
His figures inhabit mysterious landscapes and ambiguous architecture, often composed of wide swaths of color that contain echoes of color field painting. Most often, Kanevsky focuses on the nude, creating soft, tactile bodies in luscious flesh tones. His landscapes pulsate with alchemical energy, shifting between the recognizable world and pure form and color. Kanevsky describes himself as a slow painter who must nevertheless work quickly to maintain a fresh approach to the canvas. His process of painting, rubbing out, and painting over was developed over many years, and holds the key to the emotional richness of his work. This process creates a kind of palimpsest, in which past iterations and experimentations remain visible beneath the topmost layer of paint.
Alex Kanevsky was born in Russia in 1963 and studied theoretical mathematics at Vilnius University in Lithuania before coming to the United States in the early 1980s. He settled in Philadelphia and began painting classes at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts in 1989. After receiving a Pew Fellowship in 1997, Kanevsky was able to devote himself to painting full time. He has exhibited his work throughout the United States, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, and continues to live and work in Philadelphia.
Courtesy of Hollis Taggart
