Anastasia Starko. “vita brevis” 13.12.2017 – 28.01.2018

Анастасія Старко

Anastasia Starko has a recognizable style consisting of infinite fantasy, phantasmagoric images, respect for history, a sense of modernity, intellectualism, logic, tragedy, irony, femininity, sensuality and many other components, which are impossible to combine in one work and one person. And indeed, it’s difficult to combine.

Анастасія Старко / Алла Жмайло

The artist’s works offer the spectator an extremely wide range of associations when everyone is able to find something for their own. For the viewer who is acquainted with conceptualism, there are no doubts, the illustrations to the scientific articles in the magazine “Knowledge – Power” of the 1970s of Kabakov, Gorokhovsky and Sooster are recalled. The images represented in them appeared to be symbols that supplemented the overwhelming text and aroused fantasy. For the viewer who is acquainted with nonconformism, Anastasia’s works recall the images by O. Axinin, intellectual and sensual at the same time, which absorbed imagination and duality between their own meaning and symbol.

Анастасія Старко

However, according to the artist herself, she does not feel direct influence from the avant-garde of the 20s, neither the conceptualism of the 70s nor Lviv’s nonconformism. Anastasia Starko belongs to a new creative generation with new realities and new horizons of development.

For this generation of artists, a peculiar ground for creative impulses, the basis and at the same time, the ones from which they are pushing for the sake of gaining their own language is postmodernism with its kaleidoscopic style, alogism, frankness and intellectual ironicity. The Internet and other social networks have become a new reality for everyday life for artists. This is no longer a sign of our time, namely, what was said earlier about the burden of everyday life, the routine of things. Kaleidoscopic images, speed, rhythm – all these are the features of a new everyday life – a visual clondike for artists.

And on this semantic background, Anastasia Starko builds her own artistic imagery from time to time ironically, or with interest, with warmth of understanding or resentment of resistance. We can see the refinement of the composition, a wonderful sense of a sheet surface, its the texture. But the listed qualities are only the features of a high-quality specialized language, through which the artist shows her talent.
Due to these works the viewer meets the author and there is a conversation about the present, about the tradition, the boundless world and its secrets. And everyone has their own unique conversation.

Анастасія Старко

Анастасія Старко

Анастасія Старко / Алла Жмайло

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Гліб Вишеславський