Fuck Off & Other Notes On Mortality
Notes by Anna Kond
FVTVRIST Magazine // On the solo exhibition Fuck Off & Other Notes on Mortality by artist Daniel Spivakov
18 March 2026
Last October at Gallery L’Atlas in Paris, artist Daniel Spivakov held his solo exhibition “Fuck Off & Other Notes On Mortality,” represented
by Stallmann Galleries (Berlin).
I had the chance to visit the show, enter into a dialogue with the artworks and Daniel himself, and leave with a spiritual experience and a strong desire to share it. For two months the artist turned L’Atlas into his studio, bringing together and transforming fragments of his monumental paintings into new forms. By playing with scans of his hands and face, assembling canvases in a three-dimensional way and covering them with expressive and vivid brushstrokes, Daniel creates his unmistakable visual language. One of the dominant subjects of this series is hands. They convey certain codes so deeply embedded in our culture that they transcend time and space.
“On a social level, I guess, the significance of hands is… you know, priests put their hands in a certain way, and then gang members put their hands in a certain way and we all assign meaning to that. So when you make a painting you kind of want to capture that whole scope. When you’re painting a society where we are living right now, you want to go from a priest to a gang member,” says Daniel on the subject matter.
I add: “Sacro e profano,” in Italian (holy and unholy). He smiles and continues: “Exactly! It’s a full ‘Fuck Off & Other Notes On Mortality’… And I do think the only way — at least the only way I’ve seen the X-ray of human nature done successfully — was always through that gap between the sacred and the profane.”
Exhibition view, Courtesy of the artist and Stallmann Galerie
Spivakov paints the entire spectrum of the human condition, raising questions about mortality and the Unknown. Something you can’t quite put your finger on, and maybe that’s why you show your middle finger.
However, even the gesture so straightforward transforms itself in new and unexpected ways. From the rebellious “Fuck Off” to “The Hand Stands for Everything I Don’t Understand,” with an erect yet almost abstract middle finger, to an untitled artwork of the same subject captured from the palm side, it attempts to scratch the surface of understanding and dig deeper into everything we can’t truly grasp.
In front of “Fuck Off” hangs the monumental “Portrait Of Me And God.” Composed of five canvases with a depiction of the artist’s face upside down, reminiscent of Apostle Peter’s crucifixion, and hands in different positions forming a circle, the work expresses the full spectrum of being human.
A hand that could belong to an Orthodox priest, bringing his fingers together to give a blessing, is placed next to a middle finger turned toward the sky. Divine and profane. Daniel and God. And everything in between.
Self-portraits play a crucial role in Spivakov’s artistic practice.
“Somebody asked me: ‘How do you express yourself?’ And I thought about it and I think the answer is — I express self. So not necessarily myself, but I hope every time I make a self-portrait, people see themselves in it,” the artist tells me after taking a sip of his beer, with Bob Dylan playing in the background, in a gallery empty of people but filled with a strong presence radiating from each painting. For a second I thought that God might have been present there as well.
Another colossal work presented on the ground floor is “Tightrope Walker,” a constellation of nine canvases: three scans of the artist’s face pressed against the surface, about to burst out of the painting. One of them is painted over as a skull and four hands come together in a shape resembling a cross. Standing before it, one comes face to face with the fragility of life, stretched like a rope over the abyss of the unknown, and at the same time with the only certainty we have in life — death.
For a second, or maybe an eternity (what’s the difference anyway?), I felt as if I wasn’t at L’Atlas, or in Paris, or even on Earth. Gravity, for a mere moment, gave up its power and I became the Tightrope Walker, with mortality on one side and divinity on the other.
Spivakov aims at a very high goal with his art — to engage with the unknown. His process begins with it as well.
“So why did I choose hands? I can come up with some after-the-fact assumptions about why the hands are there. But the reality is — I don’t know why the hands had to be there. I just had to see where it would lead me.
Untitled, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Stallmann Galerie
But you follow things that tickle your heart or excite you, and then you simply follow that feeling, one step after another. In the end, sometimes the paintings look as if they were fully preconceived and people come to you and ask: ‘How did you make this?’ But the reality is — I don’t know. And I hope I didn’t know,” says the artist.
I feel like a child wandering in the darkness and following a spark of curiosity that leads me from one corner of each painting to another. Far from the world left outside L’Atlas’s door, I try, almost by touch, to interact with both the abstract and the very concrete aspects of each work.
They leave me with more questions than answers — and somehow I am completely fine with that. So I take a deep breath before asking a question that I knew would lead to a story that had a special impact on me.
“What about the pigeon?” “So, the pigeon is an interesting story… I moved my studio into this space and this became my residency. Everything we see now in the exhibition, I made here. And before every show you hear so many voices — expectations about what other people will think — and they are not necessarily the voices you want to listen to. In fact, the fewer of them you have, the better the work usually becomes. But sometimes you can’t help it. I was really down. I was having a cigarette outside and thinking:
‘What should I paint? What’s the reason for painting here?’ And then I was standing there and a pigeon fell right in front of me. It was barely moving. It was trying to move but had probably broken some bones.
Tightrope Walker 2025, Courtesy of the artist and Stallmann Galerie
Of course you feel heartbroken seeing that — a living being trying to stay alive but simply unable to move anymore. And I thought: that’s it. That’s the subject. So I made five of those paintings as an homage to that pigeon. Because I felt it was something real to respond to in the world. It was something undeniable to me.” The pigeon’s spirit was depicted in five paintings located on the first floor of L’Atlas. For “First Painting for a Pigeon That Died at My Door,” three canvases form the work. Hands appear on the smaller side panels: the one on the left is crossed over with a blue textured brushstroke, the one on the right marked expressively with white paint, while the central canvas is covered in black sweeps and paint splashes. Restlessness and hopefulness come together in a “T” shape to honour the fallen hero of this series.
“Second Painting for the Pigeon That Died at My Door” consists of four canvases: scans of purple fabric, vivid splashes and strokes of paint, and fingers that bring to mind how, as children, we used to press our hands together pretending it was a bird.
“Third Painting for the Pigeon That Died at My Door” is impassioned, expressive and almost urgent. White explosions of paint and red strokes dance across four canvases. Hands in the upper part of the artwork appear almost abstract. Is it a fist? Is the hand below gesturing walking? Is it shaping the letter “A”? The hand in the lower left corner is more figurative and, with the help of a red half-circle, the ring finger seems caught in motion — perhaps gesturing to come closer or tracing a circular movement. At the meeting point of three panels we see an upside-down pigeon, painted gently with delicate thin lines. This serene presence opposes the tempest of the painting.
Does the pigeon here embody the Holy Spirit? Is it a glimpse of peace in the chaos? Either way, the monumental artwork impacts the viewer and its whirling symphony makes the mind wander, perhaps even spiral in thought.
The next artwork is a promise: “Count On Me, Motherfucker,” a promise that the life and death of the protagonist of this painting would not go unnoticed. It captures the artist’s fingers and strokes of paint mapping the canvas.
“Fifth Painting for a Pigeon That Died at My Door” is the final work dedicated to the fallen hero. Bursting with paint and scans, it is composed of five panels. The hand gestures captured within it appear abstract and restless, the hand showing the middle finger tense and charged with energy. The pigeon himself is depicted twice — flying and falling. It is a catharsis. Standing before it, I felt exposed to a vivid visual symphony of life, death and everything that exists in between.
Standing face to face with the Unknown, with the indisputable evidence of mortality, there might be only one thing left to say:
“Fuck off.”
_edited.jpg)
