Lucy McKenzie (B. 1977)

With its powerful iconography transfigured through washed, delicate ochre tones, Untitled witnesses Lucy McKenzie’s interest in the visual language of idealism, its symbols of seduction and power. Executed in 1999, the work reduces the 1980 Moscow Olympic poster design to an abstract motif, a requiem to the power of painting. Bright bands of colour frame the central form of a broken octagram: a damaged symbol of completeness and regeneration. Reminiscent of supremacist painting, Untitled sentimentalises a failed Utopian vision. Whitewashing over her canvas, McKenzie sanitises an awkward history, and references the paintings of Kasimir Malevich, an art at odds with Stalinist policy.