2016

Commissioned by the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

Like many new immigrant artists, I first found work at a commercial painting studio soon after arriving in the US in the early 1990s. At Evergreen Painting Studios in New York City, I joined a team of academically-trained painters from Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, China and Ethiopia, who could turn their hand to just about anything - from painting roses over the walls of a kitsch boutique to recreating the streets and canals of Venice.

In fact I first got to ‘know’ Venice by painting the massive murals of the city that now adorn the walls and ceilings of The Venetian Las Vegas. Although the palette the Evergreen artists used to paint the elaborate architecture and canal scenes was double-checked by Italian restoration consultants, the real Venice struck me, at first, as dingy, small scale, unimpressive and crumbling by comparison when I finally had the chance to visit Italy, years later. I also realized that the mural scenes at The Venetian are an invented mash-up of the real city - the ceiling at the Doges Palace has been stretched and St Mark’s Square has been turned into a canal.

This project was the first time I had the chance to see the murals in situ at The Venetian. I rented a luxury suite at the hotel, and in collaboration with a group of graduate students from the University of Nevada, made a large paper cast of the entire room.

We covered every surface with plastic sheeting, then with heavy duty paper. We projected Images from the murals that I had worked on 20 years earlier onto the paper and painted them with grey latex paint. On top we painted our shadows in brick red, reminiscent of the traditional sanguine chalk used by Renaissance painters.

This ‘cave painting’ on the 14th floor of The Venetian became a contemporary mash-up of Baroque kitsch and hotel bedroom interior. The paper cast was removed intact and shown at The Cube gallery in downtown Las Vegas.

Materials & Actions: Plastic sheeting, 70 yards of paper, latex paint, wooden lattice, projection of paintings, tracing silhouettes and shadows.

Location: The Venetian Las Vegas, resort hotel casino, The Cube gallery in downtown Las Vegas.