Now based in Paris for a number of years, the Moscow born artist, and a resident of Poush, has recently had her works presented in the third arrondissement of Paris, by the Hors-Cadre gallery.
What questions are at the core of your creative process?
My last works are united by the theme of time, its perception and safe, the very place that many are looking for. What exactly makes us nostalgic? To what state do we want to return to and why?
Under this noise you can kiss my birthmark, 2022, oil on canvas © Gregory Copitet
How can you characterize the French public and the art community?
The French public can be described as more sophisticated and the community - more interested in each other.
What is Paris in three words for you?
Paris is a place to live and work, chosen not by circumstances, but by my desire. A part of the plan.
Culture and bureaucracy. The international context gave me more confidence in my work. Poush led to many new acquaintances.
In Paris, this is another important moment to look at yourself from the outside and tell this story in a different cultural context, to understand how it is eternal, and limitless.
Shelter in the folds of the coat lining, collections of some year, 2022, 200 x 160 cm, oil on canvas © Gregory Copitet
What do you ‘gain’ in terms of inspiration after visiting Moscow and returning to Paris? After various geographical changes?
In Moscow, through the people, there is something that takes me to some kind of dreary, bitter, but pricelessly important feeling, in the experience of life, creativity and talent of people, which cannot be compared with anything. I do not have a general image of Moscow, for example, as Paris has. Moscow is made up of fragments, moments and soul.
…I need movement to make energy flow.
How do you go about the process of finding visual images for new works?
The search for images occurs through observations, more often in a satirical form, isolating the exciting topics of everyday life. Escapism, the transformation of everyday images into the format of a fairy tale, a story about heroes, as happens in folklore, where vice or dignity is taken to the realm of grotesque. Just as carnival, like the crazy funnel of our time and the mise en scène where the plots are played out.
Vinegar in Veins, 2021, 100 x 100 cm, oil on canvas © Gregory Copitet
Your environment is surrounded by art. You have an academic education, you come from an artistic family - your brother Nikolai Koshelev is also an artist.
I do not see any shortcomings in my academic education, and I would not call it "base" as it is customary to chronologically describe the path of becoming an artist. It was an experience that helped me in the future.
The formation and disclosure of potential talent for everyone takes place in due time. I would call my base age from 5 to 11 years old, when I would read, look at books from my home library and walk in the forest with my mother.
The fact that I had an artistic environment since childhood was more evident in the objects that filled the house. In books and art albums. I respect my brother as a person and an artist, but everyone has their own story and their own world.
Past incomplete tense, 2022, 120 x 90 cm, oil on canvas. © Gregory Copitet
Can you name three authors whose work has made, or is making, the greatest impression on you?
Somov, Munch and Marcel Broodthaers.
Kseniia Klimova
