Flora Yukhnovich’s painting encompass a variety of worlds colliding with one another. The viewer is drawn into an environment where the past, fantasy, and current digital world meet. When looking at one of Yukhnovich’s paintings at first, their energetic colours and shapes engage the viewer through fun to explore, but as the viewer takes in more from the painting.
Yukhnovich takes much of her influence from art history. Specifically, she takes influence from the Rococo period painters through their soft, ornamental style of painting and their theatricality. However, Yukhnovich does not recreate the past in her paintings, but instead distorts it so that the figures in her paintings become blurred.
In addition to paintings of past artistic movements, Yukhnovich paints takes many cues from the use of myth and folklore. The use of imps, goblins, and other forms of mischief take shape in these paintings not pictorially, but instead are represented by feelings and moods of chaos and playfulness. There are hints of the beautiful and alluring.
Her paintings also feel deeply contemporary. They echo the fragmented way we experience images today, constantly scrolling, clicking, and switching between screens. The surfaces of her work often resemble digital glitches, where images break apart or overlap unexpectedly. This connection to the digital world makes her art feel immediate and relevant.
A Cacophony That Feels Intentionally Unsettled
Yukhnovich’s inspirations have been described by her as “a cacophony”, which is exactly how she approaches her work; she actively chooses not to search for harmony instead of noise, so there will be clashes between disparate ideas on one canvas, creating tension rather than equilibrium. That tension is intended for impact.
In addition to adding to this tension, the small, textured brushstrokes of paint appear to have an almost frenetic quality. The colors that are painted on the canvas seem transient, and they do not stay where they are painted on the canvas.
The most compelling aspect of her paintings is their emotional ambiguity. They can be considered as both joyful and dark, and therefore, they have created a sense of confusion and sensory overload for people today.
Yukhnovich’s work is characterized by its insistence on ambiguity, which encourages its viewers to reflect on and experience their own uncertainty as well as their relationship to ambiguity and uncertainty.
Through her work, Yukhnovich ultimately challenges our concept of the orderly progression of inspiration. This gives rise to the possibility that beauty can be cultivated from disorder and that meaning can exist within contradiction.
