Tatyana Yassievich, painter.

05.06.04 - 05.07.04

‘Sint Petersburg attracts me through its unusual rigid, geometric architecture, the enormous spaces, the northern light fall and the tough, melancholic and lonely mood that prevails notwithstanding the large amount of people walking its streets. I don’t paint the people themselves but the public places that thousands of them use each day, takig with them their emotions and worries. Stations, parks, cafes, waiting rooms.’
Tatyana Yassievich

Tatyana Yassievich (1968) her paintings are rooted in her birthplace Sint Petersburg. They are depopulated images of a city in a transitional phase. On the one hand the old Soviet Union on the other an uncertain future. On the surface it is a city that is transforming itself at a dazzling speed, but underneath the mentality from the past is still a strong presence.

Yassievich paints the public spaces where thousands of men and women pass through everyday without painting the people themselves. Their absence emphasises their importance and gives the paintings a mysterious, almost metphysical atmosphere.

Yassievich shows us an empty podium inbetween performances, with a remembrance of what has been and an expectation of what is still to come. Just like Russia.

Yassievich studied at the Mukhina Art Academy in St Petersburg, the HKU in Utrecht and Ateliers '63 in Amsterdam. Her work was published in the book 'Somebody was here. Images of St. Petersburg',Staphorst 2004, published bij Hein Elferink.

Yassievich has exhibited in museums and galleries in the Netherlands and internationally. Among them a groupshow 'Life in a Glass House' in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and a solo show at De Nederlandsche Bank.