War 2022 graphite on travertine slab, 12 x 12 inches. Private collection
My obsession with monuments appears from my early ‘collective education’, which gravitated beyond the pedagogical philosophy of Russian Anton Makarenko. Monumentality is one of the fundamental features of the Architecture of Power, an aspect that is represented with a prominent character in the structure of my compositions, especially in landscapes and architectural subjects. Megalomania materialize as an epic gesture, but with a touching component as well; castles, walls, obelisks, pyramids that have been built, even with blood and endless resources, are reduced to ethereal images, lost and vulnerable, in the remote recesses of the brain or in the memory of the collective consciousness. This drawing is clearly inspired by the Monument to the Fatherland by sculptor Vasyl Borodai; which is a 102-meter stainless steel statue that stands 62 meters above the main building of The National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War in Kyiv, Ukraine; interpreted as a resurrected nostalgic symbol of recent past history.
-Glexis Novoa