Paul Gauguin 2015

Andrey Allakhverdov’s *Paul Gauguin* is a roughly 100 by 75cm oil on canvas with an illustrative style and rich colours. It kind of makes me think about how painting can be an act of world-building. Look how Andrey has painted himself into the picture alongside two Tahitian women; maybe he's thinking about Gauguin’s own colonial gaze, his orientalism. There's an interesting tension: is he critiquing Gauguin, or is he just trying to position himself in the history of painting? I wonder what he was thinking when he painted this. Was he thinking about Gauguin himself? About Tahiti? Or was he just thinking about paint, about the movement of colour? The medium looks quite thick; you can almost feel him pushing the paint around on the canvas. Ultimately, Andrey’s painting reminds us that artists are always in conversation, borrowing, stealing, and riffing off each other's ideas. It's this continuous exchange that keeps art alive, messy, and endlessly fascinating.