Put on a Happy Face (2019)

This is an oil painting on the found soviet-era portrait of Lenin. The canvas is mounted on a supported wooden frame and sold ready to hang. Unframed painting is 80 x 60 cm. | 31.4 x 23.6 inch. It is signed, titled, and dated on the back.

Ships with EMS (Express Mail Service) worldwide.
All works of art are carefully packed and can be tracked online. Original artworks and mounted prints are shipped in a wooden crate. Unmounted paintings and prints are shipped in a dent-resistant tube.
Shipping times vary depending on the destination country but usually take between two and three weeks. Please allow for these up to 5 business days of preparation and packaging time before the artwork is shipped out.

PLEASE NOTE: The buyer will be responsible for paying international customs fees, determined by the country in which the artwork is being shipped to. Please check with your country's customs office to determine what these additional costs will be prior to making a purchase.

Each piece you purchase will come with a certificate of authenticity, a signed document proving the authenticity of the work and containing details about the artwork for your reference.

In 2015 the Ukrainian government banned all symbols and images associated with the USSR. But numerous oil portraits, sculptures, monuments and other images of Lenin began to be removed from public places decades before the "decommunization laws". What happened to the hundreds of thousands portraits of former Soviet leader? Many of them are already destroyed. Some of them had been left in attics or basements. I am looking for all these forgotten things and giving them a new life and a new artistic content.

The series of transforming Soviet portraits of Vladimir Lenin are something in between the meditative practice and the research. Images from the deep subconscious give rise to different sences that inspire to thinking and reflection. One of the main subject of the series is the transformation of human into brand that becomes entity itself and continues it's evolution without own prototype. Lenin's ideas are not widely known, but the brand is known to everybody. Brand maintains its awareness, but gradually losing the content transforming into a ghost.