Viktors Svikis | galerie michaela stock

With the finesse of an old master who uses pop-cultural language, Viktors Svikis paints collage-like everyday situations with varied and sometimes confusing themes, and he amalgamates alienating motifs and realities with subversive humor. The artist shows a shrill, colorful world: “Superman down with a pug, an isolated little girl in front of a wall, bird flu is staged with Hitchcock`s birds, Hello Kitty is no longer so pugnacious, atom bomb with baby face and Mary Stuart reloaded.”

The excellent classical training as painter in Latvia helps Svikis to show a virtuoso play with the possibilities of his language. His paintings stand between sculptural physicality, graffiti, and striking display signs. All pictorial levels together create a multi-dimensionality, this allows artworks to vibrate in moving suspension in terms of content and form. This also makes up his contemporary approach which is not based on him following modern trends but rather draws its inspiration from a current blend between virtual and natural reality as well as a combination of various levels of realities and their mechanisms.