21st century square

Svitlana Dudenko · 2024

Technique: Acrylic
Material: Canvas
Dimensions: 100 × 100 × 4 cm

5.950,00 €

"21st Century Square" (2024) by Svitlana Dudenko, presented by SmaltaArtGallery, reinterprets one of the most iconic symbols of 20th-century art — Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square. In Dudenko’s vision, this once-bold emblem of Suprematism appears transformed: the black square has contracted to a small, almost point-like patch at the center of a luminous, expanding field of white, silver, and pastel hues. The work evokes Balzac’s The Magic Skin, where a magical hide shrinks with each granted wish — here, the square seems to have withered under the immense weight of humanity’s countless desires and ambitions in the 21st century. Radiating lines and drifting white droplets suggest both cosmic space and the erosion of ideals, creating a layered dialogue between geometry, philosophy, and the human condition. Dudenko bridges the radical purity of the early avant-garde with a contemporary meditation on desire, limitation, and the inexorable passage of time.