Artist: Sanya Kantarovsky
Exhibition title: Disease of the Eyes
Venue: Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Date: August 31 – November 11, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and ©Kunsthalle Basel
Lush, moody, touching, and wry, the paintings of Sanya Kantarovsky offer a strange form of address. Their subjects gaze at you insolently (while on horseback, a corpse its casual com-panion), or entreatingly (while floating, probably wounded, in an endless sea). These are satu-rated images, built up from washes of color, layers of references, sly nods to our contemporary moment, and the self-conscious stylistic inflec-tions of painters of yesteryear. One senses that their maker believes in the urgency but also the absurdity of painting as he assembles marks that are not afraid to be imperfect, even awkward. They make almost palpable such emotions as alienation, embarrassment, intima-cy, and desire, exposing quotidian human melodrama and existential cruelty, all while being able to laugh at themselves as they turn to you so that you may laugh, too. Here, in the Russian-born artist’s largest exhibition to date and first institutional show in Switzer-land, Kantarovsky shows all new paintings and monotype prints—the connections between the two mediums revealing much about his process of constructing images.
Sanya Kantarovsky was born in 1982 in Moscow; he lives and works in New York, US.
Thanks to Jessica Arisohn, Roland Augustine, Alexis Blum, Bernard Blum, Eli Bornowski, Caroline Burghardt, Andrew Cannon, Eleanor Crabtree, Pascale Eisner, Alexandra Ferrari, Nicoletta Fiorucci, Esther Girsberger, Gobby, Mariette Herzig, Lisa Kohli, Liz Magic Laser, Vera Laser, Jimi Lee, Tanya Leighton, Lawrence Luhring, Chris McDonald, Emma McMillan, Rysia Murphy, Rodrigo Pires, Chadwick Rantanen, and Stuart Shave
With kind support from Nicoletta Fiorucci / Fiorucci Art Trust and Isaac Dreyfus-Bernheim Stiftung, with additional support from Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r.) Sebastian, Kaput, Change of Heart, Wet Rag, Abuse, Removal III, all 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on Deprivation, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on Peter, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on Documents, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r.) Zontik, Wavy Head, Documents, all 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on Seizure, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r) Snails and Bonehead, both 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r.) Floater, 2018, Friend, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r.), Alma, Banana, Enlightened SelfInterest, all 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on Alma, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on (f.l.t.r.) One World, Smear; Petrol, all 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Sanya Kantarovsky, installation view, Disease of the Eyes, view on One World, 2018, Kunsthalle Basel, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel