Anastasia Komar’s sculptural paintings merge artificial and biological in beautiful and eerie ways

Vested in our sensory perceptions of objects and space, Anastasia Komar’s newest body of work explores material juxtaposition with monochrome paintings in acrylic on board with steel and black-coated 3D-printed polymer sculptures that drape around the edges and extend into and beyond the panel. They are like nothing I have seen before – intense and provocative. Inspired by tissues and cells of animals and plant forms they have an unsettling edge.

Entering Komar’s studio on the 28th floor of WTC4, I am met with New York’s west-facing skyline, seen through floor-to-ceiling windows. It's impressive. Makeshift walls that do not meet the ceiling play host to these sculptural paintings, a series of etchings, and images of scientific research. I note they are neatly affixed in rows – the sensibility of a trained architect, which she is. The Kaliningrad-born and New York-based artist is a resident at the prestigious Silver Arts Projects. Komar, known for her thought-provoking work, has recently exhibited at BANK in Shanghai, Management in New York, and Nazarian/Curcio in Los Angeles and served on the jury for the 16th Prisma Art Prize. In late December, Swivel Gallery will show her Gild sculptures that probe the shift from artisanal traditions to mass production in deceptive materials.

“Since you can see Gild at the gallery, I want to speak about my work in the studio,” she says in her faint Russian accent. We do speak a little about one piece that will be on view, Oneiroi. It is named after a dark-winged demon from Greek mythology, which consists of a mosquito mesh box – inspired by Indian caskets that were a luxury commodity during British colonial rule – with a figurine inside made out of artificial stone. The series cleverly plays with the techniques and materials made to mimic artisanal crafts used in mass production – shells cast from synthetic material to look like precious Mammoth molars, for instance. “I invoked the Oneiro to symbolise artisanal culture, frozen and caged inside a casket of corporate expansion,” she says.

Looking around the studio, it feels like the “creatures” encroaching upon her paintings might come alive. Some resemble alien tentacles, while others are more vegetal. Cultural researchers have speculated why tentacles have, since the late 19th century, been a feature of otherworldly creatures. According to the scientific research Komar has consulted, these forms have existed in nature for thousands of years. Much is not visible to us until optical magnification, mind you. Now, Komar is preoccupied with artificial forms, such as synthetic biology and advancements in bioengineering. “These advancements give rise to new biological shapes,” Komar explains, referring to artificial organs, genetically engineered organisms, and Xenobots – lab-made organisms designed to perform specific tasks like locating cancer cells.

After journal and internet research, Komar uses innovative technologies like UV lasers, 3D printing, electroplating, and molding to make her interpretations. “I am not interested in presenting scientific data,” Komar explains; instead her works create a human connection with the scientific findings she explores.

“Being in the machine was a surreal experience,” Komar remembers from a decade of routine MRI scans during her childhood following a brain injury. “This was when I was first exposed to real scientific images. They were unlike anything I could have imagined. I felt disconnected,” she continues. It was not until the COVID-19 pandemic that she returned to observations of the scientific field, making art inspired by the ambiguity and beauty of its imagery. Both unsettling and fascinating, form the building blocks of her art, blurring the lines between what is natural, artificial, and entirely new.

Shot in her Silver Arts studio, Fenn David and Dawson Cifarelli’s video for Vogue Scandinavia captures Komar’s austere yet playful style, weird but intentional with a strong focus on forms. A reminder that imagination is the seed of many discoveries. “The predecessors to science are myth, religion, and storytelling,” Komar explains – the former two scientists often borrow from to name their discoveries – and, more recently, science is strongly linked to ethics. One of Komar’s works is titled HeLa (2021), after Henrietta Lacks’s cells, the first that could be easily multiplied in a lab setting, revolutionising research on the human genome and viruses. However, HeLa cells were used without Lacks’s consent, raising ethical concerns. Another piece, Cnida (2022), references He Jiankui’s controversial CRISPR-Cas9 gene manipulation research, which led to the birth of the first gene-edited babies. These works, with clutching and snaking forms, embody the curiosity and hostility of scientific innovation, raising questions of exploitation and ethical conduct.

Lauded as a master of sculptural objects, Komar’s work is distinguished by its conceptual sophistication which can only be described as methodical and intuitive. A hallmark of her practice (a vestige of her architectural training) is continuous experimentation with multi-material construction. Most notably, she pushes the limits of our imagination offering viewers visceral insights into human and scientific development that is otherwise hard to grasp.

‘GILD’ will open at Swivel Gallery in New York on December 21, 2024.

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