It feels appropriate at a number of levels that the debut solo show of St Petersburg-born, New York-raised Anna Shukeylo should be titled “Home.” Her exhibition takes place at the Museum of Russian Art in Jersey City in conjunction with a group show exploring issues of East and West by four artists from India, Iran and the US, selected by Ms. Shukeylo, who is, in the interests of full disclosure, assistant to the editor at artcritical. Her work takes its motifs of furnishings and wall treatments from the domestic environment while searching for formal equilibrium within overlays and disruptions. Shukeylo recalls the famous formalist credo of Maurice Denis — whose fellow symbolists Bonnard and Vuillard, along with Matisse, are evidently rich visual resources for her — that before a picture is a battle horse or a nude or whatever it is “essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.” Before they are an evocations of belonging these images are locations of finding. At once layered and flattened out, the troubled gestalt of these nervous, tentative décorations with their complexity of textures and tones makes one aware of the kinship of the process of painting to a board game in which “home” is the designated place of resolution. DAVID COHEN
Exhibition opens Saturday, November 22, 6-8PM
Museum of Russian Art, 80 Grand Street, Jersey City, accessible via PATH train to Exchange Place (1 stop from World Trade Center), on view through January 8, 2015. Hours, through December 7, Fridays, 4-8PM; weekends, 2-6PM. Thereafter by appointment. www.moramuseum.org
Anna Shukeylo, West 149th Street (Summer Day), 2014. Courtesy of the Artist
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