"DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?"

Artist: Yana Bestrova

Exhibition Venue: Crossing Art (559W 23rd St, New York)

Exhibition Dates: May 8th, 2025 – June 8th, 2025

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 8th, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Crossing Art is pleased to present Yana Bestrova: Do You See What I See, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York. Featuring a recent body of abstract and semi abstract landscape paintings, the exhibition offers a meditative yet urgent exploration of perception, memory, and the subjective nature of seeing.

Based in Paris and born in Kyiv, Ukraine, the artist’s work emerges from the intersection of Eastern European painterly tradition and a deep engagement with contemporary abstraction. Her visual language—layered, gestural, and luminous—renders landscapes not as fixed geographies but as evolving emotional terrains.

The title, Do You See What I See, serves as both an invitation and a challenge, evoking questions around authorship, identity, and the objectivity of the viewer’s gaze. The landscape becomes not only a site of external observation, but an interiorized field of reflection—an intimate cartography shaped by exile, memory, and reconstruction.

Bestrova primarily works in acrylic oil and mixed media on canvas. Her paintings are richly textured, with sedimentary layers of paint that echo geological formations or distant topographies blurred by time. These are not literal depictions, but rather intuitive responses—landscapes of feeling—where abstraction becomes a method for reclaiming space and self. Throughout the exhibition, recurring chromatic motifs—ashes of blue, burning ochres, silver-veiled greens—recall earth and sky, fire and sea, yet resist narrative closure. Prominently displayed at the gallery’s window is "Forgive,Forget,Move On",the artist’s tribute to the tradition of bulletin boards,rich layers of public and private lives of regular individuals. "Golden Section" , the largest composite work on the gallery’s Western wall reflects Bestrova’s fascination with precision and science.

About the Artist

Yana Bestrova

Yana Bestrova was born in 1966 in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1984, she received her M.F.A from Kiev Academy of Fine Arts. In 1991, Bestrova relocated to Paris, France. The artist has exhibited internationally in major institutions including the Coral Gables Museum (Florida), Zimmerli Art Museum (New Jersey), and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago), among others. The artist’s work is included in numerous international public and private collections,most notably, Zimmeli Art Museum and Pinchuk Art Center,Kiev, Ukraine. Bestrova works and lives in Paris, France.