Oksana Mas is a Ukrainian contemporary artist and the organizer of "ArtTogether", a global interactive art project aimed at visualizing the new cultural code of the modern generation and uniting people at a time of political and social turmoil.
Working with a variety of mediums, Oksana employs painting and graphic art techniques, creates sculptures, installations and large-scale photo works and partakes in urban construction and space design workshops across Europe.
Biography
Born in 1969 in Ukraine, Oksana graduated from the Mitrofan Grekov Odesa State Art School in 1992. In the 1990s, she played a part in the decade's painting revival and later investigating relational art and scientific art practices. Already an established artist, in 2003 she earned a Bachelor of Philosophy from Odesa University. Oksana is working on a PhD on problems of art in the social media.
Highlights of Oksana's work include the POST-VS-PROTO-RENAISSANCE project (a prototype of the "ArtTogether" installation) presented at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 which became one of the most attended and widely covered pavilions of the Biennale. In 2013 the artist participated in the Collateral Events program of the 55th Venice Biennale with the "Quantum Prayer" project in the "Glasstress 2013" group exhibition . In 2012, Oksana won the Independent Critics Prize at the 65th Locarno International Film Festival.
Oksana's art has been shown at multiple exhibitions worldwide, including the "Women and Art" Biennial at the Sharjah Art Museum in 2014, the "Modus R. Russian Formalism Today" (part of the Art Basel Miami non-commercial program, 2006); the "MAS" exhibit at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2008, as well as in FRIEZE (London), ARCO (Madrid), Fiac (Paris), The Armory Show (New York), Vienna Fair, Art Dubai and Art Karlsruhe.
Works by Oksana have been sold at the Sotheby's, Christie’s and Phillips auction houses. Her art-works can be found in museum and private collections in France, the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, Ukraine, Arab Emirates, Russia and Australia.
Actor Kevin Spacey selected Oksana's work "Mandala Dance", together with pieces by Tracey Emin, Banksy, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Michael Craig-Martin for a charity auction, "Illuminating the Future", held by Christie's on February 10, 2014 to support the legendary Old Vic Theater. The ruling Prince of Monaco Albert II chose Oksana’s "Spheres of Good" installations to decorate Avenue Henri Dunant in the center of Monte-Carlo.
Oksana gives lectures on contemporary art at leading universities in the United States, the UK (Cambridge) and Germany. She is also a frequent guest speaker on history of art and philosophy.
Oksana currently lives and works in Spain, Poland and Ukraine.
Work philosophy
In her art works, Oksana elaborates an aesthetic perception of a human being in times of drastic social and geo-political change that is experienced by every generation, irrespective of the era or geographical placement. Oksana’s academic knowledge in such fields as science, the philosophy of digital technologies, the history of religions and art history and her multiculturalism have created the foundation of her artistic identity and enabled her to create timeless and versatile artworks with the aim of searching for this generation's new cultural code and facilitating a creative dialogue between different religions and social groups. The artist manages to combine a vivid figurativeness of visually and formally unique works with perviousness of interpretations, based on eternal values. The symbolic images in her paintings are always both focused and ambiguous. Multi-layered meanings intertwined in every artwork immerse the audience in an everlasting process of discovering new ideas and images found in both European and Eastern cultures.