CONCORD, MASS.- Lucy Lacoste Gallery announces Wonder Land on view December 2 until December 30, 2023, a solo exhibition with acclaimed Ukrainian/Polish artist Janina Myronova, who is showing recently created sculptures and drawings from her artist residencies at The Archie Bray Foundation and the Northern Clay Center in the US. Myronova’s vividly colorful, playfully misshapen figures of humans and animals delight viewers and create narratives around the relationships and connections among families, friends, and animals.
Deeply influenced by the Slavic cultures during her formative years, Janina has developed a unique and unmistakable style inspired by folk arts such as nesting dolls, Dymkovo toys of family figures, and Ukrainian embroidery, combining these influences with her knowledge of Pre-Colombian sculpture and her interest in contemporary comic books and graphic novels. She portrays the relationships and inner worlds of families and friends using her curvaceous anthropomorphic figures as a canvas for her bright, saturated colors and precise lines. Seeking to express positive, joyful emotions with her playful characters, each composition shows a different personality and references an over-arching storyline about our collective experiences.
Drawing is integral to Myronova’s practice, and several works on paper are on view along with her ceramic sculpture. Sketching out her ideas in two-dimensions leads her to compositions that she later translates to three-dimensions, hand-building her sculptures from the bottom up then decorating with line and color, usually leaving areas of the natural color of the clay exposed, and often firing her pieces only once. Myronova says of clay, “I chose the material because I could feel it” and regarding her surface design she explains “the story of every person has different colors.” She states, “My characters display a specific, distorted body perspective. The forms are a bit clunky, chubby, anatomically misshapen, marked with accents which double the characters or hybridize their silhouettes. Each sculpture is a different personality, a personal story, a graphic novel featuring my favorite motifs: images of family relationships, parent and child, partners, pets. My emotions are “scratched” into them, with a subtle hint towards humor. Wonder, anger, fear and joy are all present there.” Intimacy, closeness, and a longing for emotional connection pervades her work along with a cheerful playfulness that invites the viewer into her expressive world.
In her artist statement, Myronova writes:
WONDER LAND it is a safe place to be with people, animals, and nature; WONDER LAND is a place to relax and to feel joy from being among friends. My work expresses happy vibes created by figurative forms with vibrant colors. You can find a friend here and immerse yourself in the joy, curiosity, and carefreeness of childhood with all the characters I’ve created. To complete the whole atmosphere of celebration, I use drawings as a playful background with layers of stories which come from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional world. The whole idea came from my personal desire for peace and love, and I would like to invite everyone to visit the world I created.
A native of Ukraine based in Poland since 2013, Janina Myronova is currently a long-term Resident Artist and Speyer Fellow at the Archie Bray foundation in Montana, well known as the oldest and one of the best ceramics residency programs in the world. Trained as a painter, designer, and sculptor, Myronova holds two master’s degrees in Sculpture and Ceramics & Design, and a PhD in Ceramics. Her works have been shown since 2014 at international level in competitions, galleries and museums and have won several prizes in Poland, Croatia, Spain, Romania, and China. She has exhibited widely in over one hundred group shows and over a dozen solo exhibitions throughout the world.
Myronova received her MFA from the Department of Ceramic Art at Lviv National Academy of Fine Arts (Lviv, Ukraine) in 2012, an MFA from the Department of Ceramics and Glass at The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts and Design (Wroclaw, Poland) in 2013, and her PhD from the Department of Ceramics and Glass at Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in 2019. Continually developing her work and practice, Myronowa has attended numerous residencies including opportunities at the New Taipei Yingge Ceramics Museum (New Taipei, Taiwan), Clayarch Gimhae Musem (Gimhae-si, Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea), Lefebvre and Fils (Paris, France), the Polish Sculpture Centre (Oronsko, Poland), and the International Ceramic Research Center (Guldagergaard, Denmark), International Ceramic Studio (Kecskemet, Hungary), Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN and, currently, the Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT.
