Flora Yukhnovich x French Fries

Interview by Agnese Torres

Photo by Eva Herzog

Modern, inspired by the classic, projected towards the future. The gist of the art of Flora Yukhnovic (1990 Norwich, UK) could be depicted in these few words, but it would certainly be an understatement. Graduated with a MA in Fine Arts at the City & Guilds of London Art School, Yukhnovic explores with great audacity and determination the points of connection between materiality and the imagery. The emphasis is on the creative process - a vehicle of meaning itself - that sees the alternation of delicate veils of colour, transparencies, and gestural brushstrokes. In her canvases, nothing is accidental, yet everything is permeated by an inebriating naturalness. Imbued with French Rococo and Italian Baroque influences, each work of Yukhnovic is a whirlwind of colours and subjects fluctuating between abstraction and figuration, where the playfulness of those currents blends harmoniously with contemporary languages and topics - never fully explicit as she likes to leave it up to the viewer the task to grasp the final, deep significance of her art. Appreciated both by critics and the market, Yukhnovic belongs to that new generation of artists whose research has its roots in the study of historicity and tradition but doesn’t fear bold experiments and sophisticated stylistic mixtures.

 

Tell me about your practice, halfway between abstractionism and figurative art. When did you start developing this peculiar painting technique? How has it evolved over time?

I trained as a portrait painter. I think I am still a figurative painter really, but I’m trying to loosen the imagery so the material can come forward and speak on its own terms. I like the idea that surface and imagery are communicating at the same time. 

Each work has different demands, and my paintings naturally shift to meet them. I used to be more involved with the weight of the material, it was all about the volume of the paint, now I’m more concerned with space and rhythm so I use more varied thickness and transparencies to play with speed and illusionary depth.

In your canvases we can see numerous references to the history of art and artistic movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as French Rococo or Italian Baroque. What fascinates you about these aesthetic and cultural styles?

They’re very playful, I enjoy the imagination and strangeness. For example, the way plants and animals emerge from decorative swirls. There is something painterly about the metamorphosis of form. I also think the exuberance chimes with the way imagery is heightened now, on social media and in popular culture. I think we still tend to consider clean lines and minimalism to be more intellectual or highbrow, it feels liberating to go in the opposite direction.

I know that in 2019, with the Victoria Miro gallery you participated in a residency in Venice where you had the opportunity to deepen your knowledge of Italian art. How has this experience enriched your artistic research and production?

It had an enormous effect on my work.  I spent my time studying ceiling paintings which are all over Venice in palazzos and churches. The idea of rhythm became more important to me. Those large frescoes are designed for the viewer to walk around underneath, to literally move through the composition, it was helpful to think about how that could translate onto canvas. 

After I got back to the UK I began working on a group of paintings about water and Venus - it had felt too obvious to make work explicitly about water while I was there, but the seeds were sown.  

It seems that with your art you wish to build a bridge between past and present. In your opinion, how important is it to study, understand, and perhaps even appreciate history and the masters of the past, to interpret contemporaneity? James Turrell once said: “All art is contemporary art because it had to be made when it was now”.

Yes, I agree, I think all contemporary imagery springs from something older and historical imagery is therefore just as interesting and relevant. For me, it’s about understanding aesthetic trends and pathways through history, how and why an aesthetic evolves. Why does it continue to be used and referenced after its time? I think we can learn a lot about how images are working on us, influencing us, by understanding how they originated and what they have variously represented. I really enjoy categorising and de-coding - it’s like being a detective.

Although your style is always recognizable, your subjects seem to vary a lot from one work to another. In some I see charming bourgeois settings - in the style of Manet's “Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe” (1863) -, in others mythological and religious scenes typical of the frescoed ceilings of European 17th-century churches and palaces. I guess it is a conscious choice to leave wide room for interpretation.

Exactly, a painting can have many meanings depending on who looks at it. The paintings I’m drawn to fizz and slip in and out of different identities. I like the idea that a painting can continue shifting and evolving even after it leaves the studio. 

It's fascinating to see how a young artist like you - in a time when minimalism and "Less is More" are all the rage - produces such rich, voluptuous, and magnificent works of art. Recently, I read somewhere that you like “the idea of combining these two art historical moments which have become highly gendered: the pretty Rococo imagery and the machismo of abstraction”. Could you explain how this perspective translates into your works?

I think I pull from a wider range of sources now.  Abstract Expressionism is the height of experiential painterly work, it’s immersive and full of material drama. And yes, it has a certain amount of macho ego thrown in. It feels very different in attitude to something like the Rococo, which is about humour, play - about delighting, leading and rewarding the viewer. I think one centres the artist and the other, the viewer. They have quite opposite concerns, however there are similarities in the idea of touch and the artists identity being captured in the gesture. I like blending and debunking apparent dichotomies, especially those which pertain to gender. 

You also resort to historical and mythological subjects to address gender issues and imbalanced power dynamics. Am I right?

Yes, it’s often about power and gender. I can't say it's as clear-headed a process as addressing imbalances. Sometimes I feel ambivalent, or I have a fascination which I don’t yet understand. I think it's more about curiosity than deliberately correcting or addressing. 

For instance, I’m thinking about your 2022 solo exhibition “Thirst Trap” at Victoria Miro in which you revisited the iconography of Venus – “the goddess of goddesses” - in the history of art. Who are the modern Venuses that inspired you?

As the personification of ideal love and beauty Venus tells us so much about society at any given point. I particularly enjoyed looking the bombshell trope in cinema, which takes Venus as its blueprint, often using water to symbolise someone too unearthly to be possessed, for example Sylvia In La Dolce Vita.

Despite your fascination for history, mythology, and antiquity, you also draw inspiration from contemporary contexts, such as pop culture, cinema, and fashion. What kind of correlation do you see between these two apparently distant worlds? And how do you combine them in your practice and poetics?

I don’t really see them as distant; I think they are part of a continuum so combining them feels very natural.

 

A few months ago you joined the array of artists of Hauser & Wirth and your first exhibition will take place in Los Angeles in 2024. What will be the focus of the show? Are you presenting a new body of works? 

I will be. I still have lots of research to do so I’m not completely sure which direction I’ll go in. At the moment, I’m interested in bacchanalia, excess and tipping points but let’s see…

I know that you also have a huge institutional project in the pipeline. Can you reveal something more about your upcoming collaboration with The Wallace Collection, London, in June 2024?

 I could not be more excited to work on a project! I will be making work in conversation with paintings by Boucher. These have been such vital works for me, and I have studied them and incorporated elements into my paintings for years now, so this is a really special moment for me. I am going to be focusing on Boucher's work with the pastoral, and the tension between nature and artifice in his work and the Rococo period generally.