Alicia Dubnyckyj: Megalopolis

Alicia Dubnyckyj returns with her highly complex abstract cityscape paintings, capturing the dynamism and speed of contemporary London, which is now firmly recognised as one of the leading cities in the world, substantiated in 2013 by being crowned the most popular tourist destination on earth. In particular, the artist's new work reflects the post-Olympic optimism felt in the Capital, encapsulating this new mood in her highly coloured, panoramic views that celebrate London's inspiring contemporary and historic architecture.

In the artist's work, London's hustle and bustle emerges, pulsating in vibrant colour that is enriched by the artist's use of industrial gloss paint. Like other contemporary artists working in this viscous-like material, such as Gary Hume or Ian Davenport, Dubnyckyj enjoys this medium for its seductive nature and ability to create an emphatically reflective surface.

These visually reverberating surfaces force our eyes to retreat and the viewer is compelled to step back to make sense of the wave of compounded abstracted shapes, a torrent of indecipherable moments and a flood of sensory stimuli, the flatness of her compositions allowing us no sanctuary. Her compositionally- driven depiction of the ever-shifting megalopolis represents not only the throng of architecture - a mix of iconic monuments and ultra-modern steel and glass structures - but also embodies the throng of people, business, and culture that synthesise to create that infamous insomniac London. Dubnyckyj lays down her painterly marks in dense conglomerations that don't seem to sit still, and which slip between figuration and abstraction. These vibrating shapes represent life, light and movement, astounding progress, and infinite expansion. Yet Dubnyckyj also asks, is this expansion, this development of the city a benefit to humanity? Is mankind's progress the civilising force it is thought of as, or just the viral multiplicity of a homogenous culture?