SONIA MELNIKOVA ART PHOTOGRAPHY

About the Artist:

Sonia Melnikova was born and trained as an artist and architect in Moscow. She attended the Moscow City Art School at the Academy of Arts of the USSR and graduated from the prestigious Moscow State Architectural Institute. She has worked as an architect, graphic artist, exhibit curator, and interior designer in Moscow and, since 1987, in San Francisco. Her artworks in various media have been exhibited in art salons in Moscow and art galleries in San Francisco and the Bay Area. She is an exhibiting member of San Francisco Women Artists Gallery.

“Sonia Melnikova appreciates the city's foggy summers. Her special brand of photography does not call for sunshine and intricate shadows, nor is it interested in reflecting the three-dimensionality of objects in photoprint. Melnikova's eye is trained on capturing barely visible or disappearing things-subtle reminders of time passing by on deserted beaches and in ghost towns-the remnants of our everyday, gradually descending into oblivion. The artist is referring to the Japanese wabi-sabi philosophy as her inspiration in seeking the transitional, the declining, the beautifully imperfect—her ultimate subject matter. She finds these momentary revelations ... with her relentlessly precise artistic vision. Melnikova sees art in rusty parts of formerly functional mechanical systems, and in flotsam and jetsam along California coastline, and in her matted archival paper prints every speck of rust and every grain of sand comes to live, captures between here and eternity, between one tidal wave and the next.” — Emma Krasov, art critic

“Sonia Melnikova's art seems to float on some poetic altitude of dissolution and phantom images of the past.” — Valeriy and Rimma Gerlovin, conceptual artists, New York

About the Artworks:

All works are signed individually produced original high-resolution photographs printed directly from the artist's digital files using non-fading inks on archival-quality papers or canvas. The artist avoids mass-producing her work by printing on-demand a limited number of pieces, some are one-of-a-kind, while maintaining full control of the quality of each individual print. Standard print size is 11"x14" (image), 16"x20" (matted), but most images can be printed in custom sizes up to 48 inches. The prints should be free from noticeable fading for at least 80 years if displayed under glass or plexi under normal commercial or residential lighting conditions, and kept away from direct sunlight.