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<\/p>\nFlora Yukhnovich\u2019s signature large-scale, gestural paintings shot the British artist to fame in the past decade. Riding a wave of popularity for ultra-contemporary painting, her works smashed their auction estimates and sold for millions of pounds. (Her current record was set at Sotheby\u2019s in 2022 at \u00a32.7m.) Yukhnovich, however, prefers not to talk about the market, simply saying \u201cthe work is so much more interesting\u201d. And she is not wrong\u2014her sweeping paintings layer references to art-historical movements, from Rococo to Abstract Expressionism, with collages of images taken from a myriad of sources to create fascinating pieces that hover somewhere between abstraction and figuration.<\/p>\n
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The rapture: Yukhnovich\u2019s Four Seasons: Autumn (2025) is born of an obsession with the work of Fran\u00e7ois Boucher, whose Four Seasons: Autumn (1755) is shown below \u00a9 Flora Yukhnovich. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Victoria Miro; Oil on mural cloth, dimensions variable; Photo: Object Studies<\/p>\n
Yukhnovich recently relocated from London to New York. The move has been a long-time dream for the artist, who says the East Coast city has always felt like home (she grew up watching television in the 1990s, when New York seemed to be the only location for shows and films). Her exhibitions in the US this year\u2014a commission at The Frick Collection in New York this month and a solo show at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles next month\u2014have helped to make this dream a reality.<\/p>\n
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Fran\u00e7ois Boucher’s Four Seasons: Autumn (1755) The Frick Collection, New York<\/p>\n
The Art Newspaper: Your works reference great art-historical traditions but there is also an element of the digital in them; they often have the effect of being pixelated or glitchy. Where does this come from?<\/p>\n
Flora Yukhnovich: I want to make that connection between something contemporary and something old. Art-historical references are interesting to me because they remind me of something contemporary, and most of the contemporary stuff I see is through my phone or on screens; that\u2019s how I, and how we all, experience the world now. The idea that an advert on Instagram might be drawing on works by [the French Rococo painter Fran\u00e7ois] Boucher is really interesting to me.<\/p>\n
I think everyone knows famous works better in the form of a photograph than being in a museum, and that means we\u2019re mostly perceiving things through a screen with a backlight. I think about the kind of filter that that puts on the world. I paint between the canvas, and my iPad and phone, where I do little digital collages. I\u2019ve always loved those documentaries on TV where they do the slow pan across a painting. At night before I go to bed, I\u2019m always looking at my paintings on my phone, just zooming in and obsessing over them.<\/p>\n
That feeling of zooming in is really apparent in your work, with small details painted in large format and vice versa.<\/p>\n
Exactly. I really like that idea of destabilising the scale in a painting\u2014that you have some sense of perspective, but then it\u2019s sort of glitched. With the collage elements in my work, I do my best to get them to all sit together but I know that they don\u2019t quite. And I think it\u2019s the not-quiteness that makes them feel a bit digital, a bit odd.<\/p>\n
You create mood boards before starting a work, which I think contributes to this collage effect in your painting.<\/p>\n
Yes, it\u2019s something I\u2019ve always done. I remember as a teenager, I would stick things on my wall and explore how the different clippings made me feel. For my painting it\u2019s like free association; I put loads of images together and then whittle it down to some that feel the most interesting. I find it so intriguing how two different images that are from very different time periods or sources can create some kind of relationship that feels very specific, like there should be an image to bridge the gap in the middle.<\/p>\n
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Yukhnovich\u2019s Four Seasons: Summer (2025), a site-specific work for the Frick Collection \u00a9 the artist, Courtesy the artist\/Hauser & Wirth\/Victoria Miro; oil on mural cloth, dimensions variable; Photo: Object Studies<\/p>\n
For me, the mood boards throw up questions that my paintings can try and answer. I\u2019m always\u00a0looking for things that could inform the\u00a0next step in the painting, or the next little motif or fragment that I want to incorporate. I\u2019m always on the lookout; my camera roll is so\u00a0random.<\/p>\n
You previously said that you become obsessed with particular artists and how they create their works. With your recent pieces made for shows at the Wallace Collection in London and the Frick in New York, are you going through a Boucher obsession?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a long Boucher obsession, but at the moment I\u2019m getting the chance to seriously deep-dive into his work and it\u2019s been a full love affair. The more I learn about him, the more interesting I think he is. I just wish everyone else loved him, too. His work is really smart and self-aware, and I think people often just assume it\u2019s decorative. But I think it\u2019s really about decoration.<\/p>\n
Can you describe your commission for The Frick Collection?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve painted wall coverings that respond to Boucher\u2019s Four Seasons (1775). I\u2019ve been working on them for the last six months in the studio and they will be stuck onto the walls of the Cabinet Gallery, above the dado rail, and the door holes will be cut into them. A brocade trim will be fitted round it to make it all look like it\u2019s part of the architecture. Each of the seasons is distinct, but the image will follow the horizon line in the same place and the scale is consistent. I hope it will feel like a panoramic view.<\/p>\n
What was on your mood board for this piece?<\/p>\n
The Four Seasons paintings were originally overdoors\u2014panels set into the architecture\u2014so I began thinking about looking up at them as you walk through the doors. It\u2019s like passing into a totally different realm. So, then I was looking at portal fantasies, [stories] like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) and Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), and also The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), with the idea that a wallpaper could encroach on your space. That\u2019s when I decided to make a wallpaper for the Frick, and to think about illusion and making something so all encompassing that it feels a bit\u00a0claustrophobic.<\/p>\n
I began researching panoramic wallpapers, looking at [the French wallpaper manufacturers] Zuber & Cie and De Gournay. I\u2019ve also looked at Victorian fairy paintings and at imps and goblins to try and bring in the idea of fantasy and escape. There are obviously lots of pastoral motifs, too, inspired by Boucher. I hope it\u2019s going to be a cacophony of lots of different things that feel almost too much to take in.<\/p>\n
With your love for Rococo and now designing wallpaper, could you see yourself expanding into the decorative arts?<\/p>\n
Yes, I think so. Working on this project with the Frick has made me feel like I want to start thinking about environments and how to build a more immersive space to look at paintings in\u2014how the paintings could maybe speak to other parts of the room, like sculptural elements, benches, wall coverings and so on.<\/p>\n
Have you tried your hand at other crafts?<\/p>\n
No, but I\u2019d like to. I got quite into bedazzling, where you stick tiny rhinestones onto pictures. I\u2019ve ordered historical paintings to bedazzle\u2026<\/p>\n
The other paintings you\u2019ve been working on this year are for a show at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles. What can we expect?<\/p>\n
There are going to be between eight and ten large-scale paintings. It\u2019s such a big space; it\u2019s an opportunity to just go wild. The show has been fed by the idea of doom scrolling and our digital descent into chaos\u2014the experience of being absolutely surrounded and bombarded by imagery and feeling like you have to keep up with everything, because it\u2019s all changing so fast. This made me think of Bacchanalia [the Greco-Roman festivals of Bacchus or Dionysus, the god of wine, known for drunken revelry], so I\u2019ve been looking at Roman architecture and Roman decadence as well as a lot at French academic painting and images of Hollywood and\u00a0advertising.<\/p>\n
Is it a strange time to be in America?<\/p>\n
Yeah, it has felt like a weird time to arrive. I did a road trip through Mississippi and Louisiana, and then spent some time in Florida, and it\u2019s so different. It was strange; it didn\u2019t feel like travelling within the same country. You go two hours outside of New York, and you\u2019re in the mountains\u2014it\u2019s wild. You go two hours out of London and you\u2019re in Surrey\u2026<\/p>\n
How are you finding New York?<\/p>\n
I love it; there\u2019s so much energy and so much happening. My studio is super quiet, so I get to enjoy both a very peaceful studio as well as the frenetic energy of New York. I\u2019ve been here nearly a year, but it\u2019s flown past.<\/p>\n
Do you feel like a year in New York has changed your practice at all?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s so hard to say. At the beginning, I wanted to make a big break and create totally different work, but I felt quite unmoored and like I didn\u2019t really recognise anything: my home, my studio. So I think, at least with the first works, they sort of felt like a bit of a refuge in that I was able to pick up a thread of my old life a little bit. It\u2019s going to probably take a little while to see how it\u2019s changed the work. I think the works are slightly more immediate\u2014some of that New York gutsiness.<\/p>\n
Biography<\/p>\n
Born: 1990 Norwich, UK<\/p>\n
Lives and works: New York<\/p>\n
Education: 2010 Foundation in art and design, Kingston University, London; 2013 Diploma and post-diploma in portraiture, Heatherley School of Fine Art, London; 2017 MA Fine Art, City & Guilds of London Art School<\/p>\n
Key Shows: 2023 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; 2024 The Wallace Collection, London; 2024 Ordrupgaard, Charlottenlund, Denmark; 2025 The Frick Collection, New York<\/p>\n
Represented by: Hauser & Wirth and Victoria Miro<\/p>\n
\u2022 Flora Yukhnovich\u2019s Four Seasons<\/a>, The Frick Collection, New York, 3 September-9 March 2026<\/p>\n \u2022 <\/a>Flora Yukhnovich: Bacchanalia<\/a>, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, 30 October-25 January 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flora Yukhnovich\u2019s signature large-scale, gestural paintings shot the British artist to fame in the past decade. Riding a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[26337,228,226,227,229,88,88468,44559,37441],"class_list":{"0":"post-141803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artist-interview","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-flora-yukhnovich","15":"tag-frick-collection","16":"tag-hauser-wirth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}