Ukraine · born 1990 · lives in Kyiv
Valentina Reina
Art alchemy. Energy. Mutation. Becoming.
Statement
I am not an artist in the conventional sense.
I am a researcher of states, an alchemist of matter, an observer of how energy takes form.
Since early childhood I have watched how everything moves, renews and transforms. The human body. Consciousness. Habits. Beliefs. Everything is subject to change.
And if everything is constantly changing, where is the “I” in all of this?
My painting is a form of dialogue with that which cannot be touched, but can be felt. I don’t paint objects. I create energetic structures, reflecting vibrations, collapses, resurrections and inner processes.
It is art through which you may encounter a version of yourself you have never met before.
These works are not depictions. They are portals. I call it transformational painting.
“Illusions shatter beneath my hands, and in their ashes I dance my madness.”
Manifesto
These are not images. They are portals. Catalysts. A contact with that which is beyond words. They do not decorate. They remember. They penetrate. They transform. They liberate.
She calls it transformational painting.
Painted with stone, wax and fire.
Real obsidian, jade, quartz, petrified wood, even mammoth tooth, set into oil and texture paste. Every surface has relief you can feel with your hand.
The age of mages
The age of science and rationality increasingly opens doors to realms where magic never disappeared. It merely hid, changing its form.
Today, at the intersection of the digital and the spiritual, ancient archetypes, images and meanings return, heralding the birth of a new era. We turn to magic not as mysticism, but as a way of sensing and transforming reality.
Transformational painting is not just an image on a wall. It is a tool that works with the psyche, memory and the unconscious. The canvas becomes a portal: a meeting point between a person and their true self.
Art no longer decorates. It impacts, unsettles, transforms. This is its power, and its answer to the call of the future.
Exhibitions
- 2022Solo exhibition: MonologueLive Love Space art venue, Kyiv ↗
- 2022Group exhibition: Young ArtistsAnniversary of Wizoria, Kyiv ↗
- 2021Solo exhibition: AwakeningKurazh Bazar, Kyiv ↗
- 2021Solo exhibition: MonologueKyiv ↗
- 2020Group exhibition: Young ArtistsOpening of Studio Artzebs, Gorodok Gallery, Kyiv ↗
- 2017Group exhibition: Diplomatic Collection of PaintingDiplomatic Academy of Ukraine, Ministry of Foreign Affairs ↗
Education
- 2016 – 2017 Individual training with painter Oleg Karavaev, Kyiv
Influences
Mikhail Vrubel · Vasily Vereshchagin · Salvador Dalí · Vincent van Gogh · Evgeny Lapchenko · Tatiana Abramova