« ... For the exhibition »A skull, a condom, and Velázquez Spivakov« chooses Diego Velázquez as a backdrop for his paintings. Initially using digital printing to render monochromatic scans of the Spanish painter’s work onto canvas, he then begins his usual painting process. With a particular attraction to oil, Spivakov uses paint as a means to place the image outside of its original context. Baroquan silhouettes morph into rib-like marks, blurring the forms of skeleton and condom. Those who have been to Venice will know it still doesn’t feel designed towards supporting twenty-first- century human life. Any evidence of this is an intense and sometimes startling contrast. Cigarette butts, gum and graffiti sit tight against the foundations of art history. Whilst it’s easy to protest this slow and laboured destruction of artefact, Spivakov chooses to accept the new-found cohabitation with antiquity. There is beauty in age, regardless of how ugly it can become. ...»

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words by Callum Jones