NEWS
Olga Feshina’s work “Girls Watching The Same Movie On The Beach” is a cover for a new chillout album “A Journey of Something Wonderful” by Kay Nakayama. It’s not her first collaboration with this Japanese music producer. In 2011, Nakayama composed a mix specially for Feshina’s show Water Trip & Yoga Fashion at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia.
ABOUT NEW ALBUM BY KAY NAKAYAMA
In July 2019, collaboration NYA Gallery with Gallery 104 will present a new body of work by the artist: “New Tech Girls—Bikini Issue.” There will be an opening reception for the public on Wednesday, July 10th, 6-9pm. The show will be on view from July 4th until July 21st.
Olga Feshina began the “New Tech Girls” series in 2016 and has continued elaborating on this body of work over the past few years. She is fascinated with how technological progress has had an adverse impact on the nature and psychological development of women today. Specifically, she offers a compelling critique of how the paradigms of contemporary feminine beauty are created, distributed, and absorbed across digital devices and platforms. The artist uses a soft, muted palette to render flat figures that have a smooth, matte surface and are situated within shallow pictorial spaces. Her work repeatedly calls attention to the idea of surface, which is appropriate as her imagery is focused on the complicated dichotomy between the virtual world and reality.
Across canvases like Girls Taking Selfie on the Beach (2016) and Girls Taking Selfie in the Fitting Room (2016), Feshina positions highly idealized young women mimicking poses they’ve seen via social media; their actions in turn continue to perpetuate these postures in a never-ending cycle of vapid mimicry. The artist mines numerous media outlets in order to become familiar with the most common gestures, poses, and stances in circulation. What is more, her characters are often in synchronized postures, underscoring the loss of individual expression and identity due to the nearly ubiquitous forces of conformity that operate underneath the surface of every image on social media. Interestingly, in Girls Taking Selfie on the Beach, one of the girls holds a selfie stick, framing the overall painting as the screen of an iPhone. In other works, such as Girls with Friends Walking in Park (2019) and Girls Watching the Same Movie on the Beach (2017), the young, slim figures are together physically, but removed or distanced psychologically because they’re engaged in entirely different virtual realms.
The artist has described her female figures as twenty-first century versions of the nymphs of antiquity. In Greek mythology, nymphs presided over certain natural locales, such as oceans, mountains, lakes, rivers, and forests. Feshina’s technologically inclined nymphs similarly inhabit outfoor environs, but are often completely disconnected from these physical surroundings, inhabiting a digital forest instead, one populated computer-coded creatures. The artist’s insertion of a doe in many of these works further expands this idea of a digital forest or enchanted grove. As Feshina has explained, animals figure rather prominently in fairy tales—folkloric or literary forms that have a lasting impact on children’s conception of self and others. Within her artistic practice, she understands this animal as representing each figure’s inner child: innocent, naive, impressionable, and needing protection. In the diptych Girls Exploring Their Feminine Nature (2017) and Inner Child Watching VR (2018), the doe is seen as being corrupted by exposure to technology.
Overall, these paintings are a social commentary on how technology has facilitated the rapid construction and dissemination of implied codes of behavior about how girls should look and act. Her work touches on concepts of beauty, image construction and distortion, identity, self-fashioning, and presentation.
In July 2019, collaboration NYA Gallery with Gallery 104 will present a new body of work by the artist: “New Tech Girls—Bikini Issue.” There will be an opening reception for the public on Wednesday, July 10th, 6-9pm. The show will be on view from July 4th until July 21st.
Tony Huffman, Independent Curator & Critic
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION NEW TECH GIRLS—BIKINI ISSUE
You can view some of the paintings from Olga Feshina’s “New Tech Girls” series at Gallery 104’s satellite location at the 1stDibs Design Center in Chelsea Monday through Friday between the hours of 10am and 6pm.
As well, her work is on display or private view by appointment at NYA Gallery at 7 Franklin Place in Tribeca, with viewing hours Monday through Sunday, 12-5pm.
“Most recently, Olga Feshina exhibited works from her ongoing series “New Tech Girls” at Google’s offices in New York and at a booth for NYAFAIR in Tribeca. “
Olga Feshina: New Tech Girls - VR Friends,
10 artworks, acrylic on canvas,
Curator: Megan Green,
Google New York, January 18 - April 30, 2019
April 23, 2019, Google New York, US
NEW TECH GIRLS SERIES MORE ABOUT NEW TECH GIRLS EXHIBITIONS ARTIST TALK
Solo exhibition New Tech Girls - VR Friends by Olga Feshina at headquarter of Google New York
Olga Feshina: New Tech Girls - VR Friends
Curator - Megan Green
Google New York, New York, US, January 18 - April 30, 2019
12 first paintings of series NEW TECH GIRLS
Transforming Apartment, Upper Manhattan, New York, US, 10.02.2018
These NEW TECH GIRLS by Olga Feshina with their new gestures and new poses who are either doing selfies or talking speakerphone they are all the same the nymphs from classical portraits or genre compositions in its new personification. They explore contemporary tech reality, being those, who made selfies revolution in social net while their poses and gestures are getting contemporary classics.
They tend to be constantly together as they strive to exchange information and then to share their senses of perception with the whole world. To get better harmony and mutual understanding the new girls subconsciously synchronize their poses, acting in unison either watching a movie, listening to music, looking for smoothie recipes, getting parcels by drone, exploring the underwater world or virtual reality and even their feminine nature with new tech gadgets.
As if disputing against computer processing of images Olga Feshina stylizes the bodies and generalizes traits of face accentuating on wide frozen smile and eyes. However, there is nothing digital in her works, other than only a digital topic. The vertical canvases 48 x 36 in (121,92 x 91,44 cm) of this series which are the proportion of typical smartphone screen are hand painted acrylic on canvas in the technique of local fills of colors and tones like a digital illustration. The girls she depicted on the paintings are practically the size of viewers to make the distance between them and us closer.
Through these series of paintings New Tech Girls artist does a research on how gadgets juxtapose with their owners – contemporary girls and young women and how they become almost parts of a body and consciousness, by doing this she glorifies this subject. Olga Feshina urges viewers to realize why they watch the same movie of virtual reality on the wild nature beach, and why they need gadgets to explore their real feminine gist from inside where an inner child which baby deer symbolizes is mesmerized with the perfection of the tech, digital and virtual world.
Transforming Apartment, Upper Manhattan, New York, 08.05.2018
“I'm an artist, who is fascinated with new technologies and gadgets. The characters of my paintings are either contemporary girls or young women, who grow up actively and comprehend their inner and external worlds by means of gadgets and technological innovations. They made selfies revolution in social net, exploring contemporary tech reality, and their new poses and gestures are getting contemporary classics.
I'm trying to track the temporary connection portraying the same nymphs with their new poses and gestures in they new personification or reincarnation and research how they are deeply involved in technological innovation. The inner child of new girls which baby deer symbolizes it for me is mesmerized with the perfection of the digital and virtual world. I am interested why they even explore their self and feminine gist with virtual reality.”
– Olga Feshina said,
“Nowadays, when computer programs imitate artist technique, I stylize bodies and generalize facial features emphasizing a wide frozen smile and eyes imitating digital pics. However, there is nothing digital in my paintings of New Tech Girls series, other than only a digital topic."
