Flora Yukhnovich

Flora Yukhnovich is acclaimed for paintings that, fluctuating between abstraction and figuration, draw on painterly traditions ranging from French Rococo and Italian Baroque to seventeenth-century Dutch still life painting and Abstract Expressionism. In her work, Yukhnovich corrals historical styles and references as multiple rhythms and energies in tandem with allusions to mythology, literature, contemporary film, music, or consumer culture.

While titles often offer a pop-cultural entry-point, inherent in Yukhnovich's painting is an investigation of meaning and materiality, in particular the structures from which gendered readings of subject and process arise. In her paintings drawn from the Rococo tradition, for instance, abstraction is used as a way to resist objectification of the female figure, while her reimagining of floral motifs actively engages with what the artist describes as the 'moralising and controlling messages' contained in traditional depictions of flowers and gardens. Yukhnovich presents a more discursive, questioning vision in which forms never quite resolve. As Eleanor Nairne comments in a 2022 essay on the artist, 'Yukhnovich finds a way to suspend her paintings in flux, the oil having been worked over a number of days so that even when it's finished there is the feeling of barely perceptible movement - like dust motes swirling in the half light, or milk marbling into a cup of tea.' Throughout her work, there is a sense of static, idealised beauty tipping into something less contained, more corporeal and compelling.

About the Artist

Born in 1990, Flora Yukhnovich completed her MA at the City & Guilds of London Art School in 2017. In 2018 she completed The Great Women Artists Residency at Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy. Her first solo exhibition was held at Brocket, London, UK, in December 2017 and has exhibited at Parafin, London, UK; GASK, the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region, Czech Republic; the Jerwood Gallery Hastings, UK and at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University, UK. Solo exhibitions with Victoria Miro include Thirst Trap, 2022, and The Venice Paintings and Barcarole, both held in 2020.

In 2022, work by the artist featured in the survey exhibition Impressionism: A World View, on view at The Nassau County Museum of Art, NY, USA.

In 2023 Yukhnovich was one of the first artists to take part in a new series of solo exhibitions responding to the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, titled Ashmolean NOW (2023–24). Also in 2023, work by the artist featured in the group exhibition New British Abstraction at CICA Vancouver, Canada; and NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2023–24).

In 2024 (5 June–3 November) with the presentation Flora Yukhnovich and François Boucher: The Language of the Rococo, paintings by the artist temporarily replaced two works by François Boucher at the top of the grand staircase on the landing of Hertford House conversing with the surrounding historical works in the Wallace Collection, London, UK.

The artist’s first museum exhibition outside the United Kingdom, titled Flora Yukhnovich: Into the Woods, was held at Ordrupgaard, Charlottenlund, Denmark (2024–25).

Yukhnovich’s work is in permanent collections including the Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA; Dallas Museum of Art, TX, USA; Government Art Collection, London, UK; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, USA; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada, and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.