Anastasiya Tarasenko – From Farm to Table

Monya Rowe Gallery is excited to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Anastasiya Tarasenko titled “From Farm to Table”. For her second solo exhibition at the gallery, Tarasenko continues to explore themes surrounding consumerism, greed, politics, sex, and feminism. The works hint at The Baroque period while being heavily influenced by Medieval art, and Illuminated manuscripts decorated in gold.

The largest painting in the exhibition, “Valley of the Happy Pigs” (2021), depicts a landscape of female pigs who nurture, fatten up, slaughter, and eat the (presumed) male pigs, but not before satisfying their own sexual desires. As in fables, Tarasenko incorporates animals to illustrate social and moral observations. Here, the artist has rewritten history and the social hierarchy as we know it to exist.

In “The Unicorn” (2021), an updated rendering of “The Unicorn in Captivity” from “The Unicorn Tapestries” (c. 1500), a female pig triumpnahlty rests atop a large rock within a confined gilded fence surrounded by a pastoral landscape. Posing with a fishing pole festooned with an oversized hook and a butcher knife – a symbol of power and self-reliance – this captive Prize Pig seems confident, even content, but is also imprisoned. She is feared and desired. In this metaphorical self-portrait, Tarasenko examines the world as viewed through the lens of a woman.

Shifting to critiques of Colonialism, “Give Me Liberty (Or Give Me Death)” (2021) depicts a Thanksgiving dinner table with each plate symbolizing a historic moment in American history. The plates shift from capturing tragic events such as, the Atomic bomb, the recent riots after George Floyd was killed in police custody, the California wildfires and the Iraq war, to treasured monuments such as the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and the Washington Monument. While commenting on greed, power and social hierarchies, Tarasenko serves these events to us on a gilded platter, an acknowledgement of complicity.

Continuing to use animals as a metaphor for overcoming our animal instincts, “Plateau of Abundance” (2021) portrays a dystopian society amongst a barren landscape with a plethora of readily available junk food. Yet, the protagonists continue to battle one another for food. They are consumed and consuming.

With confrontational and uncomfortable imagery, Tarasenko challenges the tyranny of society and how humanity is forced to fit within certain expectations and conventions. Tarasenko’s paintings are social critiques on the impact of the hidden hypocrisies ubiquitous in our culture.

Anastasiya Tarasenko (b. 1989, Kiev, Ukraine) received a MFA from the New York Academy of Art, NY and a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). In 2019 she completed the PLOP Artist Residency, London, U.K. Her work was recently exhibited at Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston; Kravets Wehby, NY; and Monya Rowe Gallery, NY. Tarasenko’s work is in the collection of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia. This is her second solo exhibition at Monya Rowe Gallery. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Gallery hours Tue-Sat 12 – 6 pm
Closed for Thanksgiving Holiday Nov. 24 – 27
Closed for the Holidays Dec. 23, 2021 – Jan 1, 2022

www.monyarowegallery.com

Location:
Monya Rowe Gallery
224 West 30th Street, #1005
10001 New York, NY
United States