Title: FIELDS OF AIR / Paintings 2018-2023
Solo exhibition: Cyrill Rafael Vasilyev
Duration: 06.09.2024 to 15.09.2024
Opening hours: 12:00 - 17:00
Opening: 06.09.2024 - 5:00 PM
Finissage: 15.09.2024 - 5:00 PM
Curated by: Catelijne Boele and Elina Alekseeva
Sound works: Hilde Wollenstein and Kacper Zemianin
About: Fields of Air is a first solo exhibition of the Hague-based artist Cyrill Rafael Vasilyev, featuring more than 25 large works on canvas created over the period of the past six years. In his practice, Cyrill explores the nature of subjectivity, perception and embodied experience through the medium of painting. His artistic practice draws from his studies in somatics (a field of bodywork that focuses on the internal experience of the body and relations between mind, body and health), as well as the Buddhist tradition. The latter provides its own way of looking at consciousness, embodiment, human experience within the continuum of life, and draws out ample cartographies of the inner terrain. In Cyrill's ouvre, memories, figures, physical and imaginary places blend together. Everyday visual impressions are entertained as symbolic and archetypal imagery and more subtle forms of subjectivity are given stage. His visual language, while using tropes of modernist painting (post-impressionism, symbolism, color-field painting), is heavily invested in engaging and exploring physicality of his medium and the materiality of the encounter with the work. It is a vision inspired by new materialism that considers matter and information— geological, biological, social and personal aspects as interconnected processes rather than distinct entities. This view embraces the disposition of enchantment and wonder towards the world.
Artist Bio: Cyrill Rafael Vasilyev is a graduate of Fine Arts Department of Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Hague (2018). Founding member of artist collective ANNASTATE (based in the Hague). Nominee of Royal Award for Modern Painting (2021) and Piket Kunstprijz (2023). Had a number of exhibitions in The Hague, as well as other places in the Netherlands and abroad. Work exhibited at Korzo, The Hague, Royal Palace, Amsterdam, EYE film museum, Amsterdam and other venues.