Review in Helsingin Sanomat 25th of March 1999

IF CHAGALL WERE A YOUNG MODERN WOMAN
Something borrowed, something blue and new

First thing Natasha Manelis brings into your mind is Chagall, then for
example Kandinsky. Rather than hunting for influences, however, it seems
to be more interesting to look how she has managed to take what she wants
from all of them and to develop her own voice.

One single painting has room for abstract and representing, cubistic colour
surfaces and softer forms. The colours are strong: a lot of bright blue, red
and yellow. The subjects are symbolic and timeless: still life of bottles,
glasses and plants, city buildings, chairs in empty landscape, female
figures and most of all endless amount of stringed instruments.

Manelis, who appears first time in Finland, was born in 1970 into an artist
family in Tadzhikistan. Nowadays  she lives in St. Petersburg with her
violinist husband. So the inspiration for violin subjects has been found
also closer than from the works of her models.

Young age and many influences show up in slight unevenness: not all the
paintings in the exhibition would be as effective on their own, without
support of the colourful roomful of them.

One of the best is Window, an oil painting, where you are looking out over
the flower vase into the city at night. Slightly cubistic touch and
stereoscopic effect from the colours combine so well that you will stay
looking in front of the painting like at a real window.

A Self portrait with a fish is also fine, mysterious: why the artist is
holding a big fish in her arms? Women in some of the paintings seem to
reflect particularly the artists own sex. The women are bold subjects who
look straight into your eyes, not just objects of your look, forms  or
decoration.

What might be most of her own are, however, the beautiful violin collages,
especially the painting named Violin II. Pictures of instruments that have
been clipped from maqazines unite with the painting in such a way that the
violin might look like painted and a real object at the same time. The bows
are so exact and sharp in the middle of the softer traces of paint, that
they seem to rise off the surface as if you could begin to play the
painting.

Arja Maunuksela