Review: Technology, spirituality meet in Igor Kashinskiy show

"Modern science helps us understand energy. I'm trying to capture that energy in paintings," says the 27-year-old Russian-born artist Igor Kashinskiy. "Energy! Vibration! I like to depict the universal energy flow — up, down, in all directions. I try to find the harmony."

Technology and spirituality come together in his cutting-edge work, where individuals are transformed as they absorb the energy that flows around them.

Kashinskiy's subjects appear to move from one state of consciousness to another. This is well exemplified in "New Vibration." There, a young man wearing headphones accesses the universal energy field through electronic impulses.

The experience transforms him from a distinct and precisely rendered individual into one who, upon encountering the Earth's harmonics, melds with them. His transformation from the physical to the spiritual world occurs before our eyes as we look from left to right across the painting.

The artist achieves this transmutation in part by his emphasis on the sensory organs. The precisely rendered hand is a pathway for the absorption of sensory experience. The webbed hand suggests the accessibility of the energy flow. Kashinskiy symbolically blocks out interruptions and reinforces spirituality or universal energy through his treatment of eyes.

Classically trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia, he painted landscapes and still-life canvases for many years. When he immigrated to the United States eight years ago, he studied at Lake Washington Technical College where he experimented with digital art, animation and graphic design. More recently he's developed an interest in meditation.

The oil paintings on canvas and mixed-media works on paper featured in this exhibit (all done in 2009) reflect both recent experiences. They are contemporary, futuristic, moving with society to a new level of understanding and expression.

Perhaps it is his understanding of the universal energy flow that has caused him to set aside 5 percent of each sale for the families of the recently slain local police officers.