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The convergence of light and space takes on new meaning in the transparent surfaces of Tatyana Stepanova. A native of Siberia with a background steeped in Russian folklore and world travel, her return to her homeland with “Light and Space” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art this fall is marked by transcendent personal narrative illuminating her mystical roots. In the 20th Century, the Abstract Expressionist movement sought to capture spirit while representational art reflected the objective forms of matter. Today, artists are struggling to find the self-defining forms that reconcile these opposites. |
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The Transparency of Light and Space – Lisa Paul Streitfeld
The convergence of light and space takes on new meaning in the transparent surfaces of Tatyana Stepanova. A native of Siberia with a background steeped in Russian folklore and world travel, her return to her homeland with “Light and Space” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art this fall is marked by transcendent personal narrative illuminating her mystical roots.
In the 20th Century, the Abstract Expressionist movement sought to capture spirit while representational art reflected the objective forms of matter. Today, artists are struggling to find the self-defining forms that reconcile these opposites.
Stepanova’s triumph is to straddle the polarity in Western art by the most direct means, the diptych—a dual form integrating Conceptualism, Pop, Minimalism and Abstraction into a personal narrative that is fresh and alive. Her interpretation of a 21st Century movement of integration between opposites is made transparent through its defiant personalization. She incorporates her identity as artist with that of teacher and artist by painting portraits of her children as models of interconnectedness between spirit and matter.
The raw edges, lucidity and commanding scale of these paintings invite the viewer into a harmonious universe. We are not merely looking at or watching Purple Wave. We are inside it, rolling with it, with the expectation that it will deliver us to the resplendent shores of transcendence. The juxtaposition of human form with landscape in this painting reveals that the ultimate destination we seek is a place in the psyche where a liberated feminine spirit is born anew.
Stepanova depicts this porous border in Earthlight by juxtaposing the primitive female form with the illusive spirit lighting raw canvas. A band of interwoven color integrates this pair of opposites with earth, water and sky.
In the Blacklight portrait of her daughter, the elements—earth, air, water and the kundalini fire of female sexuality—alchemically fuse into a quintessence. On this horizon, negative space representing shadow contains light waves mirroring the process of the human body. The dual installations reinforce this theme of spirit vs. matter.
The final destination is the hieros gamos or sacred marriage, where the opposites are integrated into a new icon. We see the result of this process in Sun Chaser, the final painting in the series. In this magnetic portrait of a real life marriage –her son and his wife—the elements converge in a joyous partnership that is dynamic, interconnected and continually evolving.
In sum, “Light and Space” depicts the human body as the ever-present origin/destination for spirit. Stepanova is evolutionary in her quest for holism, refusing to separate her art from her life as partner, parent, linguist, mythographer, world traveler and Black Belt. In opening her physical forms to the alchemical fusion of light and space, she greets every bend of line as an opportunity for rebirth. As she reflects this life on canvas, the opposites merge into a realization of a new human ideal of interconnection with the Cosmos.
