Why (am I gonna die)? Is it violence? Aggression. Strength. Something needed to be pronounced. Since this thought stems from before knowing about writing this text: These paintings are strong.
1st room/ Part I. Absence. Filled with the presence and strength of the paint. Rain as tears. Yet, some forms resemble flowers. Confrontation. Snowstorm, Ausgeburt in front of an explosion of light. Again blood; and the web of a spider. Though only loosely, no constructed form but oneway threads. Lost in universe or killed in their purpose. Void. Filled. Ausgeburt takes form. Seemingly a baby, again blood. A form placed over a pleat. In the middle: flowers.
Daniel Spivakov, Untitled (from My Finger in Your Cut) 2021. oil, varnish on inkjet print on canvas 44 x 59.5 cm 
Daniel Spivakov, Yah Yah, 2021. oil, solvent on inkjet print on vinyl (unstretched) 250 x 200 cm
Daniel Spivakov, Yah Yah, 2021. oil, solvent on inkjet print on vinyl (unstretched) 250 x 200 cm
The works oscillate between these flowers and flesh. Which is not an opposition, actually. A variation. Or transformation. Yes, the paintings move. And yet are strangely static. It’s pure tension. The pain seems stopped in its moment of motion. It was; and yet, it wasn’t.
2nd room/ Part II. Flowers and flesh. Angels and air. A horse mounting the sky, into the light. – Relief. 3rd room/ Part III. Mother and son, it seems. Two heads. The pain gets literal, takes on a human form. This time there’s no comfort. But the strange distance of a blurring and, again, static historicity put between you and the figures. A halo around the head of the boy. And a blue footprint on the white shirt of the woman. One doesn’t have to read it that way. But one could. Somebody is putting the finger into the wound. It was clear he would die anyway. When the baby was born in an explosion of flowers, blood, light. And paint. This exhibition unfolds as a story, a metamorphosis. Readable in two directions. Which one doesn’t matter. There’s flowers and flesh, angels and air; snowstorm and light, blood and paint. Violence and love.
There’s Guston and Twombly; Caravaggio and Vermeer, Tillmans, Tarkovsky and Aitken. But these paintings are the next generation.
Daniel Spivakov was born in 1996 and spent his childhood in Kiev, Ukraine. At the age of 15, he moved to Oklahoma, USA, through a family- exchange programme. Without speaking the language upon moving, it was there that art became his main concern. The mixture of a post-soviet upbringing and a personal maturation in the Southern part of USA gave him an unusual perspective on contemporary culture. Graduated from Central Saint Martins studying Fine Art, Daniel now resides in Berlin.
Exhibition: Daniel Spivakov. You’re Gonna Die
Exhibition duration: 3 june – 6 august 2021
Address and contact:
STALLMANN
Schillerstraße 70, 10627 Berlin
www.stallmann.club
