Socium by Andrii Sahach
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 50 x 40 cm
Year: 2024
Price: $100000.00 USD
Status: available
Have you ever thought about ants? Did you know that termites, which can destroy almost everything around them, are actually afraid of... ants? Yes, in a twist of nature's irony, the ones who destroy fear only those who build. It's strikingly similar to human society an eternal confrontation.12 In this painting, I've illustrated my journey from my hometown to the capital. This is how I saw that path then, and how I still see it today.3 The artwork is full of riddles even the ant tunnels are unusual: they're a fragment of the Ukrainian highway map that I've traveled many times. For the highlights above the tunnels, I used copper and gold pigments to emphasize the richness of this land. The proportions of reproductive ants to worker ants, their numbers, their directions none of it is random. Everything is based.
Why collect this work?
Socium packs insects, chambers and branching passages across nearly the entire surface. By withholding a clear centre or open ground, the painting makes collective activity appear structured yet congested, with building and obstruction occupying the same system.
- Sahach’s profile describes a practice joining scientific thought with questions of memory and perception. In this work, that approach supports an analogy between insect colonies, human society and competing forms of collective labour.
- In the supplied photograph, segmented bodies move through dark channels between irregular earthen forms. The artist identifies part of this network as a fragment of Ukrainian highways he travelled between his hometown and the capital, turning remembered movement into an underground map.
- Catalogued as acrylic on canvas, the 2024 painting uses dense, repeated dots and outlines to separate bodies, passages and surrounding masses. The artist reports using copper and gold pigments above the tunnels, potentially allowing reflected light to alter their prominence in person.
- At 50 by 40 cm, Socium compresses infrastructure, labour and conflict into a compact field. Its significance lies in how a personal route remains embedded within a larger social system without resolving into one fixed allegory.
About the Artist
Andrii Sahach
Andrii Sahach is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: Painting. Based in Kyiv, UA.
Nationality: Ukrainian
My works are meditations on memory, time, and the fragility of existence.
