Frida Kahlo 2017

Andrey Allakhverdov’s ‘Frida Kahlo’ is a painting rendered in thick strokes of oil paint and features strong portraits against an impressionistic backdrop. It's got that uncanny feeling of a memory. I’m really taken by the way the painting constructs its own little world. Kahlo sits in the foreground, palette in hand, while behind her a canvas presents another smaller figure. It makes me wonder about the layers of representation, like a hall of mirrors reflecting back and forth between the real and the depicted. There’s a beautiful tension between Kahlo’s expression and the background, as if Allakhverdov is thinking about mortality. Making a painting can be like this, a conversation across time. You’re adding to a dialogue that painters have been having for centuries. And that conversation, that’s where the real magic happens, right?