Ever wondered what primordial soup actually looks like? According to Vita Eruhimovitz, it isn’t teeming with rice noodles or boosted by a nice mirepoix. The artist’s latest series, Biophilia, is instead a swirling vortex of biological matter and digital riff-raff, set on high heat and stirred with a paintbrush.
“The stories [in Biophilia] are those of natural history and creation myths, biological and artificial life, and digital worlds,” says LA-based Eruhimovitz, who approaches her 2D work through the lens of a sculptor and installation artist: “Everything in these spaces—including brush strokes and paint smears—is 3D and has its own materiality; objects interact with each other according to their own laws of physics.”
Although Eruhimovitz admits she’s ditched the idea of overt symbolism in Biophilia, the work still exists between abstraction and representation, playing with our very human need to see familiar shapes as meaningful. Abandoning symbols seems to have paid off for Eruhimovitz, who favors visceral, action-style painting over painstaking illustration. “The material and physical action of multi-layered painting, along with dynamic gestures, parallels the universal properties of biological life: growth, violence, sexuality, death, and decay,” she writes in her artist statement.
Interestingly, Eruhimovitz’s instinctual painting style has brought her closer to larger theoretical concepts, like “states of fragmented consciousness, the fluidity of time-space fabric moving between chaos and void, and universal consciousness.” Sounds like the makings of a very tasty primordial soup.
Editor’s note: Though she’s now based in LA, Vita Eruhimovitz was born in Ukraine. In light of recent events in Eastern Europe, the artist is donating 100% of her art sales to aid humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. To purchase Eruhimovitz’s work and donate to the cause, please go here.
[Biophilia] is a swirling vortex of biological matter and digital riff-raff, set on high heat and stirred with a paintbrush.
Biophilia
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