Finalist – Prix Picto de la Mode 2024 : Ksenia Usacheva

Ksenia Usacheva, visual artist, painter and photographer, was born in 1991 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She spent most of her school years in the Far East of Russia. From a young age, she was passionate about painting, however her curiosity also pushed her towards the practice of various artistic activities. From the age of 7, she began taking classes at a Russian art school. In 2012 she obtained a Diploma from the Russian Academy of International Affairs and Economy. Following her graduation, Ksenia flew to Italy, where she studied Graphic Design in Florence. Back in Russia, she took a closer interest in the practice of photography, through in-depth training with leading figures in Russian Photography. In 2013 Ksenia moved to Paris to study Photography full-time at the Spéos school, from which she graduated the following year. During her photography studies Ksenia specialized in fashion photography. Her qualities as a photographer and her unique style quickly allowed her to work with a large number of Parisian and international creators on various projects (photo editorials, look-books, campaigns, celebrity portraits). In parallel with her practice of fashion photography, Ksenia develops series of still lifes which will subsequently be exhibited (Institut du Monde Arabe, Galerie Spéos). In order to deepen her knowledge in Art History and Visual Arts, she decided to enroll in a Master of Visual Arts at the Faculty of Visual Arts at the University of the Sorbonne. During her Master’s degree at the Sorbonne, Ksenia developed a passion for the practice of oil painting, while asserting a very colorful surrealist, even dreamlike style, full of symbolism. Ksenia’s work brings together a variety of themes, referencing the great masters of painting while mixing her love of color and photography. Her colorful dreamlike paintings are always filled with multiple details, driven by the search for feeling which perfectly reflects her gaze and her imagination. By mixing different genres through a very personal vision, she deconstructs the world in a playful way to create a surreal, timeless universe, offering new perspectives to the audience. Beauty is external, Beauty is an exception to the rule! Beauty is where the eye rests. Beauty transcends us but remains when we disappear. We are moving towards the future, and beauty is the eternal present!

« Poetry of distortion »

“Throughout time, the artist has always been the mirror of the modern world. The artist is an alchemist, transforming his emotions, his dreams and his torments into works of art. His inner world is a kaleidoscope of experiences, of memories and questions. According to the laws of nature, it is known that the Earth rotates around its axis. But if natural changes occur on it, various incidents damage the balance of nature. We call this a violation of the material balance. When a person’s concepts of his previous values are lost in the world and we call this a mental imbalance. The artist is a privileged witness to the changes of our time. His gaze scrutinizes the social fractures, the political upheavals, technological advances. How to not get lost in the world of chaos? As the great thinkers say: to be in balance, it is sometimes normal to lose some. This series is a response to the search for the inner world of the artist, to the state of mind arising from the high-speed flow of the modern world. In geometric progression, the world begins to spin very quickly, a person cannot keep up with such speed of a torrent of information. The artist begins to distort his vision of beauty. This series is a surreal distortion of reality. In a world where the boundaries of good and evil are blurred, where everything is absolutely ambiguous, the concepts of beauty are no longer the canons of the ideal world. Everyone has their own rules, their own vision of this world and their own balance. And each creative distortion has its own aesthetic, its own poetry and its own beauty. In these uncertain times, the artist remains a beacon, illuminating our path through the storms of change.”