Oleksandr Roitburd. Metaphors of femininity

On 14 October 1961, Ukrainian artist, curator and head of the Odesa Art Museum Oleksandr Roitburd was born. To celebrate the artist's birthday, we have prepared an exhibition of works from private collections dedicated to Roitburd's view of women and his art about women.

‘I don't describe anything, I model a state,’ Roitburd said about his works. And in his depictions of female figures, this position is extremely clear.

Although women appear frequently in Roitburd's paintings, they have nothing to do with his life experience. They are objects, material for the artist's pictorial studies and professional searches. Roitburd's female images are devoid of individual traits, each woman is just a masterfully painted simulacrum, devoid of anything significant.

‘They are all of the same order. They do not represent anything, they do not signify anything. They are not the subject of my study or love,’ the author explains.

When depicting women, Roitburd experiments with forms of corporeality. He refuses the unconditional physiological norm and constructs an alternative corporeality. In the artist's interpretation, the body can become something as stretchy as chewing gum, as fluid as silicone, lose its torso and both arms, consist of one head, and undergo many other modifications.

‘I'm not satisfied with the givenness of the bodily construction, and I'm always trying to overcome and refute it. When some anatomical givenness prevents me from implementing the necessary plastic solution, when my hands prevent me from emphasising a certain angle of the body, when I need to focus on something and certain details turn out to be superfluous, then all these bodily metamorphoses take place. Bodies multiply, stick together, grow through each other.’

Archetypal images for mass culture - women cats, nuns, geishas, women victims and women executioners - even when depicted in extremely frank mannerisms, do not give rise to sexual desire, only voyeuristic joy.

Based on the materials of the album ‘Roitburd’ by O. Roitburd and O. Balashova