Bio

Vita Eruhimovitz was born in Ukraine, grew up in Israel, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Vita holds a BFA from Shenkar College and an MFA from Washington University in Saint Louis. Vita’s background in science and technology inspire and inform her practice. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis, Museum of Design Holon in Israel, Brattleboro Museum in Vermont, and at the San Diego Art Institute Museum. Vita has been awarded an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, Herzliya Artist Residence, Israel, Trestle Art Space, NYC, Playa, OR, and more.

www.vitaeruhimovitz.com

Artist Statement

I make paintings, usually large ones. They are always spaces and I like to travel inside them. I alternate layers of chaotic expression with ordering and construction. I’m interested in the ways that scale and form trigger bodily sensations. I’m also interested in the ways that painted bodies and paint as a body coexist in one space.  

To become an artist I dropped out of a doctorate in computational biology. I still think about biological and artificial life quite a bit when I’m not painting. The dynamic and physical process of my painting parallels the universal properties of biological life. Its self-referential and self-responsive character correspond with the biological life cycle with its emergence, growth, violence, sexuality, death, and decay.

A few years ago I went caving for the first time. At some point I found myself crawling in pitch black darkness through the narrowest tunnel, completely surrounded by masses of rock. Surprisingly, I wasn’t uneasy, but felt hugged and comforted. Since then I’ve had several other interactions with caves. Two years ago I discovered that I was pregnant. During pregnancy I was thinking a lot about caves. I found my cave sketchbooks and looked through them regularly. I was feeling I have become a cave and somehow the cave that I have become was merging with the caves inside which I have been. This was one of the strangest experiences of my pregnancy.  

My most recent body of work is infused with these sensations and my other experiences of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. In these paintings I sought not to conceptualize my sensations, letting them pass to paint in a way that bypasses language.