"I unbelievably love the color. I like researching it endlessly, listening to it, and colliding with it, and every time I feel surprised at how little we know about it. It’s limitless."
Toma Stenko’s powerful, often large-scale works balance movement and stillness, color, and form. It is a quest to see the visible in the invisible, the infinite in the limited.
Her work is an exploration of love in all its aspects. Romantic, maternal, self, broken, and new – love is a roller-coaster of emotions that we all share. Stenko delves into the complex emotions of love through a kaleidoscope of color.
The swirling gold and orange passages encircling a gentle blue shape that seems poised to take flight in The Touch speak of infinity, anticipation, and change. The Cloud of Love explodes in bursts of deep pinks and yellows against a fluid background of dreamy blues and aquamarines – all movement and energy. By contrast, Passion is aflush with reds, purples, greens, and yellows; the mixed palette of desire, fear, tenderness, and doubt – burning, melting.
Working in mixed media and using an innovative meld of emotive drip and classical painting, Stenko uses her experience as an artist for stage, film, and the English National Ballet to create large-scale immersive works that are alive, expressing through color the essence of a feeling, the fluctuation of emotions.
Stenko (b. 1980, Georgia) is an award-winning artist, film director, and fashion designer who holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the Central Saint Martins University of Art and Design, London. Most recently, her artwork was selected for the Venice Biennale 2022 where she was also allocated a separate 2-story venue for a solo exhibition; her work also earned a Certificate of Achievement at the Qatar International Art Festival 2022. Actively exhibited at international art exhibitions. Her paintings are in collections in New York, London, Paris, Doha, Dubai, and other cities of the world.
Selected exhibitions
2023
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World Art Dubai;
2022
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Personal Exhibition THE ARTIST’S EYE in London;
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Personal Exhibition in Art Museum of Sochi, 2022;
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Personal Exhibition Observers, Biennale 2022, Venice;
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Personal Exhibition Fragile Angel, Biennale 2022, Venice;
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Katara International Art Festival;
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Katara International Arabian Horse Festival, KIAHF;
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KIAHF Graffiti festival;
2021
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Personal Exhibition, Gallery of Fort, Sochi, 2021;
2020
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Personal Exhibition HOW LOVE FEELS, London;
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Art Museum of Sochi.