Artwork Description
Gift of Dream
Dimensions: 27.5 x 29.25″
Year: 2005
Media: archival pigment print on canvas
Igor Melnikov’s archival pigment print on canvas work, Gift of Dream, provokes an ambivalent emotional response among viewers; the scene is at once one of comfort and yet the young boy has been removed from the traditional domestic space and placed within one that might be better suited for animals. The viewer is encouraged to contend with the emotionally charged desire to protect the child or remove him from the scene, as well as unravel the elusive narrative behind the work that Melnikov has spun.
Russian born artist, Igor Melnivok, upends traditional associations with portraiture through his haunting and intrinsically psychological paintings of emotionally ambiguous children and within his subtle natural explorations. Rather than focusing on the individual identity of those within his works, Melnikov instead looks to viewers as dynamic participants in the interpretation of his paintings, allowing them to determine whether the children might burst into tears or laughter, based on personal experience, thought, and upbringing. Melnikov is fascinated with the simultaneity of happiness and suffering, which he believes function as an expression of the ‘complexity of the human personality’ and exist as a component of the ‘meaning of being’. Melnikov’s paintings are collage-like, yet not in the traditional, material sense of the process—instead layering his own psychological explorations onto his attempted understandings of the human condition and expression. While his muted color palettes might at first appear to be reductive, they instead focus viewers’ attention on the figures within the work and encourage slow and thorough readings of the detailing that remains visually available. While people and the human condition remain the primary subjects within his paintings, Melnikov also expresses an artistic concern for the natural world, whether expressed in landscape surroundings or in its more material and familiar manifestations, seen in the figure’s clothing and simple possessions.