Yelena’s practice continually questions what painting can be and how it operates in contemporary conditions. The work pulls the histories of abstraction into sharper focus creating ‘slow’ images that serve as an antidote to digital culture. Her Evaporating Paintings balance between vanishing and materialisation, as if undergoing a light sensitive photographic process. The images are not quite there; they float between physical absence and digital presence highlighting the question of intangibility and invisibility, themes central to Yelena’s work. The recent body of work presented at After Image, a solo show at Nottingham Contemporary 2016, reflects on the value and ownership of artworks, their display and distribution in public/private spaces.
Yelena graduated with Distinction from MA Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2011. She was selected for ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries’ (2011) and ‘New Sensations’ (2011). In 2013 she had a solo show Insoluble Moments in Vienna which was part of curatorial city initiative Why Painting Now? In 2014, she was shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Award in Painting and selected to be part of Thames and Hudson’s new publication 100 Painters of Tomorrow. In 2016, her work was included in Vitamin P3 (The 108 International Artists Revolutionizing Painting Today), published by Phaidon Press. Yelena’s works are part of RCA Permanent Collection, Saatchi Collection, Zabludowicz Collection and the Nottingham Castle Permanent Collection