514 West 28th Street, New York
September 4–September 28, 2024
Kasmin is delighted to present Zone, a solo exhibition of new intimately-scaled paintings by Matvey Levenstein (b. 1960, U.S.S.R.). This exhibition will be Levenstein’s first at Kasmin since receiving a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant in 2023.
Using his intuitive familiarity with his chosen subject matter, Levenstein’s new works present fictionalized impressions of his environment, both interiors and landscapes. A rising sun pierces through a foggy sky overlooking a quiet inlet. A candlestick sits softly at the center of a reflective tabletop as a lone figure turns away from the viewer. Rendered in oil on copper or wood, Levenstein continues to explore the expressive capacity of a restrictive palette at a constrained scale.
Working in layers on toned grounds, Levenstein achieves a cinematic sensibility. The title of the show is a nod to Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker and the Strugatsky brothers' 1972 science fiction novel Roadside Picnic, on which the film is based. There, the Zone refers to a place where things seem normal at first glance, but the closer you get, the stranger they become—much like the shifting dynamic from familiar to unfamiliar in the works on view. Rich with exquisite detail, Levenstein’s paintings encourage close looking to unearth their poetic investigations of place.