Svitlana Ahranovska

Svitlana Ahranovska

Biography

Svitlana Ahranovska was born in 1985 in Dnipro
2004-2009 - studied at DOTHK, painting department
2009-2015 - studied at NAOMA, M. Storozhenko's temple painting workshop
2016 - exhibition "OgoArt:stARTup" art space "SKLO", Kyiv
2016 - participation in the visual program of "Kyiv poetry week" festival, Kyiv
2016 - exhibition "Installation", "White world" gallery, Kyiv
2016 - participation in art residency in Velykyi Pereviz village, Poltava region
2018 - exhibition "Somnambulistic P" "White world" gallery, Kyiv
2019 - participation in the project "MMMMM" Compilation of non-figurative art by Hyperthelia press
2019 - exhibition "Transition state" Portal 11 gallery, Kyiv
2019 - exhibition of Art Prize 2019 nominees at Portal 11 gallery, 3rd prize
2020 - exhibition "Molodi" Portal 11 gallery, Kyiv
2020 - exhibition "Time Zero" Institute of Problems of Contemporary Art

Works

Series 'Portrait Against the Landscape', 
2021Canvas, oil'

Portrait Against the Landscape' is a series of paintings dedicated to the theme of the connection between a person and the place they live in, with the landscape that constantly surrounds them. I based the works on photographs of local residents, people who have spent a long time, or even their entire lives, in this place, and combined these images with the scenery of the village of Travneve.I created an image of a person who is deeply connected to the landscape and dissolves within it; thus, the facial features almost disappear, transforming in turn into part of the landscape. This project is a continuation of a portrait series that I have been working on for the past two years, so it shares some similarities in conceptual and artistic solutions.Frequently throughout the day, a person looks at a screen more often than at their surroundings, and a significant portion of the information upon which they build their understanding of the world is obtained through screens. Therefore, it is evident that a certain digital aesthetics, including errors in the display of web pages, pixelated textures typical of low-quality images, other glitches, and ordinary digital noise, expand our perception of visual imagery. This is not something new or unusual—just as television once influenced the creation of visual imagery, so too did the advent of photography long before that. I am intrigued by this influence, and I enjoy incorporating such 'painterly' digital errors into my works.Thus, in my creations, I often use collages for which I create digital glitches. This method of working adds another layer of meaning: the process of translating from one medium—digital, so to speak, contemporary—into the language of another, using the tools of classical oil painting.