Materials:
Oil, Linen
Dimensions:
120 x 80 cm
Credit:
Presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 2023/24
Ownership history:
Purchased from the artist by the Contemporary Art Society, 2024; presented to The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, 2023/24
Alexandra Kadzevich finds inspiration in the surrounding landscape. Interested in small details that usually escape the eye, Kadzevich collects fragments of form and colour from ordinary objects to imbue her paintings with their essence. The blurring of the boundaries between painting and sculpture creates a rich dialogue in her work. Kadzevich’s paintings have an intimacy of time and place, and her sensitive handling of experience is expressed through her materials to create works that evoke traces of both the familiar and the mysterious.
Kadzevich’s placement and handling of colour trigger notions of land and sea, highlighting the coexistence between what is static and what is always shifting. In Placing or Appearing to Place, soft washes of colour in sandy, earthy hues contrast with tones of violet blue. In Magic on the Borders of Things, areas of canvas have been left raw, contrasting with the bold brushwork that dances across the painting. Kadzevich’s colour palette has the warmth of the earth and the coolness of sea and sky, which harmonise with brighter moments of yellow and pink. A vertical line divides the composition almost in half, signifying a border or threshold as Kadzevich demarcates a space of fluctuating feeling and meaning.
The Pier Arts Centre is developing a collection of works by women artists who experiment with processes that are intuitive and reflective. The qualities of Kadzevich’s paintings resonate with works in the Centre by Barbara Hepworth and Margaret Mellis, who were pushing the boundaries of everyday materials at the forefront of Modernist art. The Pier Arts Centre has also held a solo exhibition of Kadzevich’s works in 2019 as part of the UK/SWAP residency programme, developed by the British Council.
