It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter is a stunning example of Flora Yukhnovich’s unique synthesis of contemporary abstraction and Old Master painting. Wildly gestural and romantically pigmented, the work embraces an aesthetic of frivolity and is charged with a keen awareness of viewership and the politics of perception. A rapidly rising star, Yukhnovich is uniquely capable of satisfying a nostalgia for worlds past while toying with the limits between viewer and artwork. In It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter, wryly named after a song from Disney’s Little Mermaid, thick impasto oil paint covers the vast canvas, creating an immersive portal into the artist’s world. It is this dynamism of application that affords the viewer the sensation of complete envelopment. Shades of teal, blue, brown, cream, and yellow coalesce, forming an abstract, almost aquatic scene. Concentrated with light hues, the center of the work is framed by an array of deeper, darker shades, creating the illusion of sunlight and conjuring the sensation of emerging out of deep waters to approach a sun-dappled surface.
Image © WALLACE collects ION / © WALLACE collects ION, LONDON, UK / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
Flora Yukhnovich: Market Precedent
As is typical of Yukhnovich’s work, the organic imagery of It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter is informed by the Rococo movement of the early 18th century. Characterized by a pastel palette, ornamentation, asymmetry, and an overall embrace of decadence, Yukhnovich embraces the freedom and hedonism of masterworks by François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard to ground contemporary culture in this framework while countering passivity through abstraction. On countering passive objectification, Yukhnovich has noted, “Abstraction enables me to do that by not complying with the confines of form, but instead breaking free and becoming more about color and the sensation of various marks. The looseness of abstract brushstrokes also brings a more subjective, fluid quality where the viewer has to fill in the blanks from their own dictionary of marks; the works then slip in and out of focus at different moments, so that they then become not quite still enough and not quite tangible enough to invite objectification.” (Flora Yukhnovich, Through the Language of the Rococo: In Conversation with Flora Yukhnovich, (online))
"The Rococo is not a popular movement, so it holds some of that tension for me. The same goes for aesthetic languages traditionally associated with women and girls...So for me, the feminine also has this conflict built into it – the oscillation between pleasure and shame is a recurring theme in my work."
Image © Joan Mitchell Foundation
Art © Estate of Joan Mitchell
Yukhnovich’s loose brushstrokes and liberal use of color showcase the influence of Willem de Kooning and the other Abstract Expressionists. As such there is an interesting juxtaposition between the influences of Rococo “femininity” and Abstract Expressionist “masculinity,” with staccato expressionistic brushstrokes set against the refinement and delicacy of the artist’s palette. Unapologetically euphoric, It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter revels in the joy of paint, conjuring an immersive, transportative experience that evokes pastural idylls and long summer days.