Shelter (with Vlada Ralko) (2015)
paintings, works on paper

Wounded Healer

Our expectations of art are so specific as to be almost utilitarian. Individual viewers tend to expect aesthetic pleasure, while society demands that art assert, illustrate or affirm its dominant ideology. Art critics assume that art should analyze reality and prod it towards changes. Artists are constantly under scrutiny, as if they were sitting for an exam. That might be true, but the artist need only pass muster with himself, and with history.

for Art School Project, 2015. 6 paintings, works on paper 

Art classes start with a still life composed of the most basic shapes: a sphere, a cylinder, a pyramid, a simple jug. These objects are not yet self-contained: they are incomplete and unfinished. These foetal objects seek the status of a completed, recognizable thing that can be named. They are the basic primal shapes that a student will then appropriate to recreate the “world of objects” in its entirety. 

Burnt Tree (2012 - 2014), with Vlada Ralko and Olexander Babak. Curated by Valeriy Sakharuk

Poet’s Refuge* (with Vlada Ralko)

From the tragic and dramatic events unfolding in Ukraine, a question has arisen which is as vital as it is painful: ‘where is artistic expression?’ It is as if artistic expression has no place in today’s reality which is bursting with manifestations of cruelty. But if any form of language were able to extend its own limits and take on the absurdity, unpredictability and even cruelty of our current reality, then it would certainly be the poetic language. Moreover, it is the ever-changing poetic image that impersonates reality (for example, scenery or a person), not the other way round.

Drawings (ink, acrylic, gouache, graphite, marker on paper)

I find paper’s capacity to preserve information appealing. Draw a simple line, and it will instantly absorb all knowledge about the world around it and “offer up” all the information you need the moment you glance at it. I turn to paper to document intentions not yet robbed by the final result. Drawings carry the energy of ideas and projects that are not yet worn down by their final execution.

Reflection

Reflection appears in this project as a form of dialogue. Copying turns into a mysterious process of reality reconstruction through its multiplication. The project becomes a reproduction of a confrontation, a duel. The actual reality and reflected reality mutually get rid of their contents, and cross each other out, until finally they are restored, and transformed into a single pure and abstract form.

Sculpture. Iron

Spatial objects, sculpture, installation (composite aluminum, iron, automotive enamel, light). Crimea, Gurzuf

The Heat project was provoked by the call of the place, when the Crimean settlement, remote from the capital's audience, not only inspired but also directly attracted the work. The work on the objects continued in Gurzuf. At first, the objects were planned to be implanted into the body of the space where they were created, wrapping them in the aura of the place. Next, we were going to move the project forward, recreating it in new conditions.

Landscape. Fragments (A series of paintings)

Returning to a well-known landscape sometimes becomes a necessity for me. Usually, I observe a familiar space from afar like a map of imaginary landscapes layered over time. For me, a specific place is only a pretext for a landscape. When I am close to the landscape, I manage to slow down my own gesture, to decompose it into phases.

Series of works on paper, 62 x 101, acrylic, ink, gouache on paper