the turquoise ether magazine’s mission is to publish independent critical reviews of promising artists from over The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

Turquoise #5 — Anastasiia Aleksandrenko (Russia)

Anastasiia Aleksandrenko is a contemporary artist from Russia. Her artistic language can be described by the following tags: minimalism, auto-fiction, reflection on everyday life, post-expressionist mood, intimacy. The artistic space of her artworks balances between the simplicity of composition and a little pressure on the viewer, between the closeness of the inner plot and the openness of the artist’s message, between the apparent technical simplicity and the complexity of hatching and the general idea as well.

Anastasiia“s series of artworks 'Sit and Watch” is the most interesting for analysis. “Sit and watch” is a series of graphic canvases made in a similar dark red-brown color scheme. “Sit and watch” is a statement about ideal or absolute frustration, which is transcendent to mental events (internal) and political or social events (external). Such frustration seems to be a dead end, a refuge, a place of liberation and a place of execution. The visual techniques chosen by the artist perfectly accentuate this uncertainty. It seems, that Anastasiia gives the viewer a fulcrum (a chair) and instructions (sit and watch), but she takes away everything else (narrative, coordinate system, the whole universe). Interactivity and tightness are perfectly combined, they create a space where one can engage with artworks in numerous ways.

The most remarkable feature of Anastasiia’s artistic practice is balance between incompatible opposites, implicit humanism and perception conflicts.