Golden mask 2022

This is Sergey Piskunov’s Golden Mask and it looks like it's made with oil on canvas. I can almost feel the artist layering the gold leaf, carefully pressing it onto the dark contours of the face. The painting has this push-and-pull between the flat, shimmering gold and the depth of the black background. I’m curious about the artist’s choice of gold. It’s not just decorative, but a kind of armour, or maybe a fragile skin. The gold is broken, fragmented, like a shattered mirror reflecting back something complex and not-so-perfect. It reminds me of Klimt, but with a contemporary twist. There's this quiet intensity. We are all trying to cover ourselves in something shiny, hoping it hides the bits we don’t want anyone to see. But Piskunov isn't afraid to show the cracks.