“B” Dry Goods is pleased to present Spanking the Queen, selections from two recent bodies of work by Brooklyn-based artist Shura Skaya (AKA Shura Chernozatonskaya). 
 

In these bold and colorful works, Shura Skaya asserts she is both magician and even, clown. Indeed, the artist has played explicitly at the clown role in some of her strange - often funny, haunting, unclassifiable - short films.  There, as in the present paintings, there is indeed something of the enduring Russian love affair with the circus, harkening back to the 11th century of the skomorokh, a kind of wandering minstrel-cum-clown which would dance, sing, conjure tricks and perform comical scenes. But, while sometimes humorous, these works are no laughing matter: with varied subjects defying easy classification, the paintings push and pull on our hearts - like the best clowns - not merely entertaining, but exploring our humanity and contradictions. 
 

This show presents a grouping of works from her monumental rolled paintings series, 7 x 7 foot acrylic on unstretched canvases meant to be unfurled and hung from their wooden post edges. Yet despite their impressive size, they can be hidden away easily, stored, swapped out and even, perhaps, call to mind the rolled backdrop tarps of a traveling circus. Inherent in their easily-packed form is a shy, if impish, nature. But when fully exposed with their painted riots of color and gesture and bold imagery, the artist seems to thumb her nose at the very idea of quietness or modesty: “HA!” these paintings seem to proclaim. Or perhaps it is the reverse: we encounter first the impactful full view of the works and then, imagining their easy hiding away, they ask…slinking off… “well, maybe?” This playful tension between subject, form and materiality is part of the project of these works. 
 

Likewise, this inherent tension is encountered in the grouping of small format paintings on porcelain which constitute the other body of Skaya’s work presented here. The smooth surfaces are unforgiving and the paint must be applied quickly and without hesitation. The speed is visible, and inherent in the painted surfaces is the sense that they could somehow be wiped clean. The paint is fixed, baked in, but looks still wet, fragile, susceptible to revision or erasure. Paintings which in substance and form assert themselves with mastery, but which at the same time, double back and question themselves, coyly, with a smile.