Sanya Kantarovsky (b. 1982) currently lives and works in New York. He received an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles, in 2011, and a BFA with a focus on painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. Kantarovsky’s works often cross a variety of mediums. His creative approach is multifaceted. The works are often found to reckon with their own embarrassment. The dark humor consistent in Kantarovsky’s work thrusts private space – no matter physical or psychological – into public view. As Kantarovsky’s most well known body of work, his figurative paintings often shift drastically in their scales, paint application and stylization. The figures in Kantarovsky’s paintings are gawked at, exposed, poked, or spooned medicine, evoking the feeling of an uneasy inner monologue. They interact with one another, as well as the edges of the canvas itself, testing the confines of their given bodies and their given frame.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Sanya Kantarovsky, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2020); Sanya Kantarovsky: On Them, Luhring Augustine, New York (2019); Sanya Kantarovsky: Disease of the Eyes, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2018); Sanya Kantarovsky: Letdown, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2017); Feral Neighbours, Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London (2016); In the Gutter, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2016), among others.

Selected group exhibitions include: 100 Drawings from Now, Drawing Center, New York (2020); BED AND CLOCK, MOON AND BEACH: Edvard Munch, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (2020); (Nothing But) Flowers, Karma, New York (2020); Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2020); This Corrosion, Modern Art, London (2020); 10 Year Anniversary Show, Altman Siegel, San Francsico (2019); Drawing Biennial 2019, Drawing Room, London (2019); I’m Made of Water, Rental Gallery, East Hampton (2019); A Seed’s A Star, Loyal Gallery, Stockholm (2019); Taka Ishii Gallery 25th Anniversary Group Exhibition: Survived!, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2019); Wars, David Nolan Gallery, New York (2019); ICA Collection: Entangled in the Everyday, Institute of Contemporary Art/ Boston (2018); Nightfall, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2018); Give Up the Ghost, 13th Baltic Triennial, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania (2018); La Vie simple – Simplement la vie / Songs of Alienation, Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, Arles, France (2017); An Uncanny Likeness, Simon Lee Gallery, New York (2017); The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin, Jewish Museum, New York (2017); Menagerie: Animals on View, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York (2017); Social Surfaces, Artists Space, New York (2017); Thinking Out Loud: Notes for an Evolving Collection, The Warehouse, Dallas (2017), among others.