Signal Myth (originally exhibited and published as Untitled) stands as a breakout piece in Maria Lankina’s formative abstract practice. Painted in 2010 during her earliest period at the Art Center of Florida, the work is rendered on raw, unstretched canvas, capturing her instinctive shift into large-scale gesture, emotional excess, and chromatic disruption.
A near-hallucinatory field of neon pink, lavender, rust, and electric green unfurls across the surface like an emotional transmission. Using palette knives, rapid washes, and aggressive drag techniques, Lankina constructed a visual rupture — a coded signal ripped from the body. The work holds tension between chaos and rhythm, with visual echoes that feel both ancient and futuristic.
This piece quickly became a signal to the larger art world. It was featured in COMPLEX Magazine’s “20 Artists You Might Like If You Like Basquiat” (2014) and was selected by Rebecca Wilson, Chief Curator of Saatchi Art, for the globally curated Inspired by Basquiat collection. In both instances, it appeared under its original title, Untitled, introducing Lankina’s raw, chaotic elegance to international audiences.
Now renamed Signal Myth, the painting takes on a mythohuman resonance — acting not only as artifact but as transmission. It marks the moment Lankina’s work began to broadcast emotion, memory, rupture, and reinvention in pure chromatic form. A visual myth, forever in motion.