On Golsa Golchini’s Snow Wave

Winter sports in the palm of the hand

Skiers coming down a slope on a thick layer of white paint, skaters whose rink is defined by a thick layer of acrylic circled over an old painting in an ornate frame, a ski mountaineer climbing an abstract snow peak, or climbers whose path is a skateboard covered in white paint. Golsa Golchini depicts simple plots using various materials as bases, such as scraps of cardboard, books, old paintings, the floor or her own palm. Winter sports are one of her most frequent subjects.

In the first phase when creating her pieces, Golsa Golchini often uses the impasto technique. The Italian word for "dough" also refers to the artist's typical application of thick layers of paint on the background to achieve plasticity, making her paintings literally stand out in space. This effect is enhanced by the play of shadows that the artist uses in her works. The natural shadows, created spontaneously by applying thick layers of acrylic, are supplemented by the artist with artificial ones around the figures in her paintings. 

Unlike the simple backgrounds, often created with one or more seemingly carelessly applied colours, Golsa Golchini depicts her figures in minute detail using digital painting software. At the end of her process, she adds details such as footprints, water splashes, snow or the aforementioned shadows by hand. 

The realistic rendering, the similar stances of the individual characters resembling playing pieces and the limited colour palette all have an impact on the overall impression her works give off. They all seem a bit fantastical as if enclosed in their own magical world.

Immersing in art

But it's not just winter sports.  The theme for her creations can be almost anything that surrounds her, but in general, she tries to depict everyday activities close to us. „My aim is to immerse the observer into the work and make him/her see the world and everyday actions in a different way,“ says the author. 

Among her favourite subjects are miniature swimmers, such as a woman plunging headfirst into a coloured stripe on cardboard meant to represent the sea, an athlete trying to swim to the tip of her ring finger, surfers riding three-dimensional waves, or snorkelling divers. 

Golsa Golchini produces art for a wide range of audiences. Her works are easy to understand, realistic, with a touch of humour, and some are even reminiscent of popular jokes circulating on the internet based on parallels from art history, such as when boys playing football accidentally shoot their ball into a landscape painting. Although the artist often teeters on the edge of good taste, her works are exactly the kind of art that even people who might not otherwise be so keen on art will love. After all, that's all the artist is after, as she says herself: “(...)my everyday mission is to make a type of Art that speaks a language that can be comprehended by everyone and that can conquer many eyes and hearts. I believe the era of “complicated” artworks has come to an end and our century is in true need of simplicity and joy. “

Golsa Golchini was born in 1986 in Tehran, Iran and has been living and working in Italy since 2004.In 2010 she graduated from the Accademia Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. In addition to painting, she is also a photographer and won the Arte Award in 2015 for her work, combining photography, drawing and graffiti in her competition pieces. In the same year, she fell ill with a rare form of bone cancer that affected her right arm and was unable to use this arm for half a year. As a right-handed artist, she began to work on perfecting her painting with her left hand despite the circumstances and now uses both hands in her work.