Previously working separately and unfamiliar with each other, the authors of the exhibition Art in Mind & Abstract emphasise the unity of new trends in contemporary art. The works are striking in their harmony as they visually interact with each other.

Among all the exhibited works, a series of works by a nineteen-year-old artist Maya Yaroshenko attracted special attention of the guests of the vernissage. Her paintings were created using a variety of techniques, combining work in classical ink and computer graphics. The result of such a synthesis allows to fully realise how an artist can keep up with the current times, using traditional painting fundamentals while working on a graphics tablet. At a time when artificial intelligence is rapidly taking over the world and many people wonder how technological progress affects art, Maya Yaroshenko answers this question with her works — deep, full of meaning and extremely modern.

The whole series of paintings is permeated with the motif of war and the way the artist internally experiences the events of recent years in three countries to which she is directly related. As it happens, these are Russia, Ukraine and Israel at the same time.

The series is dedicated to the theme of human fragility and mortality. This is very vividly embodied in the painting Another Brick in the Wall, in which two columns of indistinguishable people walk towards death. Nevertheless, their coarse blood-gray overcoats do not hide their vulnerable essence — human skeletons that represent not only the death that war and the combatants themselves bring, but also their own defencelessness before the ruthless events in which they found themselves as faceless agents.

The composition of À la sesonde contrasts gently with the previous painting. Despite the similarity of expressive devices, the skeletons in Á la seconde, painted in soft pink, gracefully perform ballet pas. The artist, for whom one of her favourite subjects to paint is a human being, was inspired to create this painting by a pair of swans, which she often observed on the lake near her home. The figures’ gentle movements and their swan-like grace communicate both the continuity of life and the continuation of art even in the darkest of times, when human fragility is transformed into life-saving flexibility.

The poignant composition The Trick of Perception creates an endless closed circle between itself and the viewer — a person standing with his back to the viewer is looking at another painting inside the present one. In the image inside, the horizon is ablaze with bright fire, gradually merging with the viewer’s own painted ones. This painting can well be called prophetic, as this scene came to the artist in a dream a month before the horrific events of 7/10 in Israel, from where she left to study right before the war. The very construction of the composition gives a person complete freedom in its perception and interpretation.

The tenderness, translucency and multilayered shades, such as in the painting Faded makes one think that all these images came to the artist in her dreams. Maya herself explains that even when painting with digital methods, she continues to use the basics of painting, acquired in the process of learning from professional artists, and spends all her free time in constant improvement of her visual skills.

Maya Yaroshenko started painting in early childhood and realisedthat she would devote her life to it. However, according to her own words 10 years ago her abilities were not as desirable, not even enough to be accepted to an art school in Moscow. Instead, the artist chose her own path, combining drawing and computer graphics, and already at the age of fourteen took part in her first group exhibition in Israel, where she was the youngest participant, on a par with adult artists.

Maya’s efforts to improve her drawing skills over the years have not been in vain. Even when she draws abstract shapes in ink, they form themselves into multifaceted compositions. The painting Life/Death on display at The Brick Lane Gallery is a perfect example of this, statically depicting the process of life from beginning to end through the forms — womb and skull. Works that combine the hope and fear inherent to our lives are no accident for the artist — and like a true creator, Maya Yaroshenko says, “Draw what makes you terrified. What you just don’t know how to put into words.”