Los Angeles based artist Alexandra Manukyan (covered here) is instantly recognizable for her captivatingly dark and surrealistic oil paintings. Painted with a sense of the Renaissance, Manukyan’s artworks feature strong young women in highly dramatic costumes and environments. This Saturday, she will present a new series of paintings and drawings in her upcoming solo exhibition, “Oracle of Extinction”, with Copro Gallery in Los Angeles. With a newfound concern for the planet, her works touch upon our damaging treatment of our environment and, if uncorrected, its grim impact on our future. Although styled after classical influences, her new work is especially contemporary for its relevance to this modern issue. She portrays animals decaying in polluted landfills, melting icecaps, tangled in trash and debris, while humans must learn to adapt to rising sea levels in colorful underwater scenes. Manukyan’s message of concern also comes with one of hope for change. Her animal subjects are accompanied by beautiful, tender loving goddesses. Some are crowned with smoking power plants, others the antlers of their dying animal counterparts, as they carry the weight of our actions and exhibit our potential to do the right thing.
