Drawing City in a Woman, pentaptych, artist Oleksandr Yatsenko

• Artist: Oleksandr Yatsenko
• Title: "City in a Woman", pentaptych
• Year: 2017
• Size: 5 sheets, each 85 × 61 cm (four horizontal, one vertical)
• Materials: felt-tip pen on paper
• Original hand-made work; sold as a set of five parts

"City in a Woman" is a pentaptych of five sheets united by a single image: the female body and the city merge into one. The central vertical sheet shows a reclining female figure with her arms raised behind her head, as if resting on the rooftops of tall buildings. On the four horizontal sheets the figures dissolve into the cityscape: the curves of the bodies become streets, blocks and hills, with the silhouettes of buildings and the skyline rising behind them. The viewer does not immediately see where the person ends and the architecture begins — and this duality is the essence of the work.

The work is made with felt-tip pens on paper in the artist's characteristic mosaic-like, ornamental manner. Every form is broken into small cells, as if laid out in smalt or ceramic tiles: the body is drawn with a fine light-blue grid, the buildings are filled with dense blue and dark "windows", and the sky and background with rhythmic hatching and stripes. This technique demands painstaking work and gives the sheets an almost jewel-like detail that is best appreciated up close.

The palette combines rich blue and ultramarine with white, light blue and warm accents of pink, ochre, terracotta and gold. The light grid of the body contrasts with the dense blue masses of the buildings, while the pink and lilac stripes of the sky fill the composition with air. The mood is contemplative and slightly ironic: the city appears as a living organism, and the woman as both its soul and its landscape.

Oleksandr Yatsenko is a Kyiv-based artist who graduated from the Faculty of Painting of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. His work combines painting with elements of mosaic, graphics and ornament, and one of his key themes is the relationship between people and the world around them. "City in a Woman" is the title of his solo project shown in 2017 at the Pavlovka gallery in Kyiv.

The five sheets can be displayed as a single arrangement — for example, with the vertical sheet in the centre — on a large wall in a living room, hallway, study or loft space. The work is sold only as a complete set. Given its nude subject, it suits a private interior and will make an unusual gift for a lover of contemporary graphic art.