After HB
yuliya vladkovska
2026 | OIL ON LINEN | 150 x 100 cm
Yuliya Vladkovska, After HB, 2026. Oil on linen, 150 × 100 cm. Yellow spherical gummy sweet, blue-and-white striped birthday-candle fragment, polka-dot wrapping paper, alphabet beads and coloured beads.
After HB is a 2026 oil painting on linen by Yuliya Vladkovska depicting a yellow spherical gummy sweet, a blue-and-white striped candle fragment, polka-dot wrapping paper, alphabet beads and coloured beads dispersed across a pale field.
yuliya vladkovska
Polka-dot wrapping paper, a striped candle fragment and a yellow sweet appear among loose beads. HB refers to “Happy Birthday.”
These small remnants retain the colour of an occasion without showing the occasion itself. A fold in the paper, alternating candle stripes and scattered letters offer separate points of attention across the pale ground.
The objects could have been set aside, overlooked or kept; their arrangement gives no firm indication. Signs of celebration remain, accompanied by the quieter sense that something has already passed.
Alphabet beads suggest the possibility of a greeting or a name, without completing a message.
A birthday briefly gives ordinary things a particular purpose. Afterwards, paper, wax and sweets become ordinary again, although something of the occasion may remain attached to them.
The painting stays with that slight change in how familiar objects are seen.
Detail of Yuliya Vladkovska, After HB, 2026. Oil on linen, with polka-dot wrapping paper, coloured beads and an alphabet bead.
Detail of Yuliya Vladkovska, After HB, 2026. Oil on linen, with a yellow spherical gummy sweet, a blue-and-white striped birthday-candle fragment, an alphabet bead and coloured beads.
Yellow spherical gummy sweet; blue-and-white striped candle fragment; polka-dot wrapping paper; alphabet beads; coloured beads.
Pale field; scattered letters; striped candle fragment; polka-dot pattern; spherical and cubic coloured forms; dispersed composition; open intervals; enlarged everyday fragments.
Birthday; celebration; gifting; wrapping paper; birthday candle; sweets; alphabet beads; personal messages; handmade jewellery; childhood; keepsakes; memory; nostalgia; absence; aftermath; incomplete language.
Related works
Selected works extending the same interplay of memory, celebration, absence and incomplete meaning.
