Aks Misyuta

Aks Misyuta paints and makes bronze sculpture, showing expressive, sometimes grotesque figures in gloomy settings and in enigmatic, invented situations. Her figures work as psychological self-portraits, tender and resilient at once, and combine physical feeling with an absurdity that is both comic and tragic. A recurring character is the timewaster, recognisable by a wristwatch without a dial and absorbed in languid activities, a deliberate passivity set against the pressure to be productive. In painting, Misyuta works intuitively, without sketches or references, letting figures and places rise from a first dark layer like photographs developing in a darkroom. Dragging rough brushes through the paint, she creates grainy striations that recall lenticular images, so forms flicker between clarity and blur.