ART 14 GALLERY » Projects

Sergey Zvyagintsev “FORM” 23.10.2021- 4.12.2021

Viktoria — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 13:14:57 +0000

“Stingy form. And it depends on us how to diversify and fill it with content.

Only I still can’t understand the role of this thin line in the middle, does it unite or divide? “

– Sergey Zvyagintsev

Serhiy Zvyagintsev’s works, at first glance, can be confused with abstract paintings, or with installations, in the case when they are exhibited in rolls. The viewer sees a wonderful painting – exquisite gammas combined with a carefully crafted texture. It is a pleasure to contemplate quality things.

The depth of the exhibition’s concept begins to unfold later, when you notice that all the works have a common compositional feature – the division in half by a horizontal line. This constant repetition suggests that you should not calmly switch your mind to a comfortable rest in the midst of decorative colors and textures. Something more significant is hidden by the artist in these works. So, we have a riddle: what is it?

During the preparation of the exhibition, I had the opportunity to ask the author what he depicted. His response began with the words, “Everyone saw it every day.” Indeed, most riddels (perhaps all) are about ordinary things, but snatched from the flow of everyday life due to an unexpected point of view. For example: “Through the water he passes over, and he himself does not leave.” Indeed, everyone has seen the bridge, but here we are talking about it without the usual context, which obscures our perception, and, in the end, makes this bridge completely invisible. Bridges, houses, trees and many other things have long since “sunk” and ceased to exist for us in everyday life.

Serhiy Zvyagintsev’s visual mystery is solved through childhood and adolescence memories: the walls of the kindergarten … the walls of the hospital … the walls of the kitchens and corridors … They were painted with oil-based paint, divided in half by a thin line of color, barely compatible with the two neighbours. Oil-based paint did not differ in brightness of colors, and over time it quickly aged, faded and even acquired a certain nobility of centuries. Such walls, with a condescending romantic view of reality, could resemble medieval palimpsests of manuscripts with dozens of layers of inscriptions, drawings, corrections and additional colors.

However, only children and adolescents felt the importance of these inscriptions and drawings. Waiting in long lines, hours in corridors, clinics, hospital beds, military units, in the absence of other images, made me look closely at the painted bare walls and look for patterns of cracks and draw random lines in the silhouettes of people or animals. .

Over time, after several repaints, layers of paint of different shades were superimposed on each other, forming a complex color and texture painting. Over the years, adjustments were made – the clarity of the lines was lost, the rigidity of the ubiquitous tricolor was softened.

The same walls in the porches became a surface for creative action, expression and communication with peers. It was there, in the absence of cafes or discos, that the first dates took place. Painted walls acquired a state of abrasion from their backs or shoulders (for example, as in the work “Pink Love”). The surface of the walls in the houses left by the residents for a long time kept the imprints of the lively life that once raged on its stairs. The acquired form continued to indicate a past phenomenon.

At the exhibition “Form” by Sergei Zvgintsev visual memories are enhanced by a well-found image of time – the walls are rolled, like the sky that rolls an angel in the famous image of the twelfth century in St. Cyril’s Church in Kyiv.

Serhiy Zvyagintsev’s works share another, more significant feature with medieval art. Like icons, in which the upper world is not depicted, but is given in its immediate presence, so in the works of the exhibition “Form” things are not painted on canvas, but reproduced. The last observation forces us to call these artefacts not paintings, at least in the traditional sense of the word. These objects are something closer to installations, despite the flatness of the materials involved.

Serhiy Zvyagintsev’s works appeal to the distant experience of every spectator and the memories acquired in childhood and adolescence. To reflect on the time that rolls up these memories like an angel rolls up the sky.

And these are works that are able to unroll rolls of memories over and over again.

–Vysheslav Gleb

Svitlana Sholomitska «Iron. Touch» 21.09.2021- 16.10.2021

Viktoria — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 12:33:24 +0000

“A series about sensory experience, transmitted nonverbally, without a state of understanding, but by accepting the progress of nature, the passage of time, the change of states. The beauty of oxidized iron at different stages. Warm, earthy, rough volumes, inspired by the motives of Kyiv architectural constructivism and modernism, like short phrases from the streets… »

– Svitlana Sholomitska

The exhibition includes works of:

Volodymyr Yershykhin, Oleksij Marchitan, Oksana Movchan, Glib Vyshe-Slavsky, Anatoliy Tverdyi, Gagik Kurgnyan, Samuel Ackerman and Olena Zviahintseva.

Volodymyr Yershikhin. Pipl. 13.02. – 7.03.2020

Viktoria — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 11:55:16 +0000

Volodymyr Yershikhin is an an artist known since the New Ukrainian Wave. In many respects, this exhibition is a continuation and creative development of the ideas and aesthetic findings of the artist for the last few years.
For a classical art viewer V. Yershikhin’s works may appear quite provocative or frivolous. However, those who are close to the New Wave of Ukrainian art will joyfully recognize the powerful breath of irony of postmodern discourse.
In this exhibition one can see the images of people transformed into signs. Only gender and a type of action remain recognizable. Discarding individual features, the artist emphasizes the masses, which is amplified by multiple repetition of similar humanoid signs. That is, in comparison with his previous works, the author shifts the focus of his creative attention from the phenomenon of fetishization of brands, to the devaluation of individual traits in modern society. This is a world of cyber-generalizations where events exist in the form of schemes, signs and markings. These are digital arrays of information, a database in which any personal thoughts and feelings are lost. In these works modern times are very similar to prehistoric ones, when the individuality of each person was not yet realized, and people perceived themselves only on the basis of belonging to a certain collective, occupation or action.
With this new exhibition, the author notes the existence of a depersonalized world around us, dominated by collectivism with its attributes of statistical generalizations enhanced by computer technology. This is a world of signs and schemes, the world of a new, super-modern and, as well, prehistoric savagery is a world of mass consciousness. However, there is no didactics in the works presented, only a statement that is detached from emotions: humanity is alive, the intersection is expanding, cyber technologies are conquering the world, and artists are finding new ideas and forms of a sober view of reality for the sake of self-awareness and society.
G. Vysheslavsky

Olena Kudinova. Post Scriptum. 21.11-28.12.2019

Viktoria — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 12:30:17 +0000

Art 14 Gallery presents Olena Kudinova’s exhibition «Post Scriptum».

Olena Kudinova (1958, Murmansk – 2017, Kyiv) a graphic artist, interior designer who also created easel paintings. The artists worked mainly in Kharkiv.

The beginning of O. Kudinova’s creative career was marked by a significant historical period – the collapse of the USSR, Perestroika, and the first years of Ukraine’s independence. There were also rapid changes in the art world that time. The preferences of the art community and viewers changed with lightning speed, powerful influences of Western art emerged, and previously closed avant-garde and modern treasures of the past were discovered. Many young artists declared themselves under the new life circumstances. In Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporizhzhya, Uzhgorod numerous daring exhibitions were opened, new communities were formed among artists, writers, musicians, directors, who are now united with the name “New Wave of Ukrainian Art” (1987 – 1994/1995).

The paintings and graphics of young Kharkiv artists of the late 1980s differed from those of their colleagues from Kiev, Odessa, or Lviv. They were determined to set aside academic style, historicism, neoclassicism. Instead they searched for a new language of creativity by borrowing design, scenography or photo art. The cheerfulness, energy and unusual stylistics are felt in most of their works. For example, instead of beloved in Kyiv trans-vanguard or Lviv’s secession, they were attracted by the constructivism of the 1920s.

However, not all artists were able to stay on the art scene, to find, and then retain their own themes and style. And O. Kudinova’s name and creativity takes a worthy place among those few.

The first impressions of the artist’s works are the depth of emotional saturation that directs our feelings to calm reflections, such as in the “Diaries” series (2007), or vice versa, astonishes and disturbs with the powerful expression in “House” (2004), “The Game” (1997), “Alien Land” (1989), “House by the Sea” (1989). The collage principle of composition and seriality allows the artist to combine reflections and feelings in each work, moreover through accurate reproduction of the inner state to talk to the viewer about abstract and conceptual things, for example, in “Angle of View” (1997), “Judgments” (2004) , “Distortion” (1999) and others.

Looking at the works, the viewer can be convinced that their titles and subjects belong mainly to two different categories: place and time. Here are the names of the places: “Road to the South”, “Walk in the City”, “Alien Land”, “House by the Sea”. Such works as “P. S. ”(Post Scriptum), “Continuation of the Holiday”, “End the of Day”, “History”, “Moving” and “Diary” are connected with time. However, both of them, so different in essence of the category of being, do not need to change the artistic language in O. Kudinova’s interpretation. That seems natural because the author delivers them through the flow of her own subjective perception and, thus, continues the discourse embedded in the philosophy of existentialism.

O. Kudinova’s works are sometimes similar to abstractions; the subject world familiar to everyone is given without undue detail in them. The preference is given to feelings and ideas, and in some series, such as “Diary”, there is a narrative. This poetics is close to Kandinsky’s early abstractions, but certainly it is opposite of Gegenstandslose Kunst, such as Suprematism, Orphism, and others.

This exhibition not only honors the memory of the talented artist and the wonderful person who was Elena Kudinova, but also emphasizes the fact that the artist’s creative work is continuing, which is hinted at by the name of the exhibition, “Post Scriptum”.

Wasteland Lovers. Oleksandr Naiden. 19.09-19.10.2019

Viktoria — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 13:25:50 +0000

ART 14 Gallery opens the 2019/2020 season with an exhibition of new works by an artist, art critic and a writer Oleksandr Naiden.A bizarre world of images, so emotional, contemplative, serious and at the same time ironic, interlaced in strange proportions, forms a unique, always recognizable authorial style of gouaches by O. Naiden. And just the author’s talent knows how it is possible to combine these seemingly incompatible things within one work. As the author says: “to my mind, real things in memory acquire the qualities of ghosts, and those who have been forgotten – the ones of shadows. The combination of ghosts and shadows are in gouaches shown here. But they are based on what was once a reality. Only God is able to create matter from nothing. “The compositions consist of things that seem to be expressly common such as faces, people, plants, buildings. They are often “wrong”, grotesque. And all those are represented in odd lines, with a distortion of scale, perspective and proportions. However, the sincerity and openness of the naive art style, the ironic playfulness and emotionality that immediately catches the viewer’s eye, is only one of the layers of the work. Looking at it more deeply we can see that there is not just “ordinary” naive. Upon closer look, much more serious and even dramatic meanings are revealed such as reflections on books, our own lives, existence of a man in the universe. No wonder you can find some quotes from the author’s favorite philosophers J. P. Sartre or M. Heidegger.One might think that we are facing a postmodern pasture of surrealism elements, naive art and intellectualism. However, it is not the postmodern irony or the trans-avant-garde juggling of reminiscences that forms the basis of the author’s creativity although all of that is fully represented here. It is worth mentioning that the author is not just an artist, but a researcher and art critic as well. We should also remember that an important part of Naiden’s work is scientific research devoted to exploring the role of traditional culture in the innovative trends of contemporary art. And names of the works like “Self-Knowledge in August # 2,” or “Elder Flowers. Duchan with us ” is not a playful backstory of postmodernism. The real basis of constructing the author’s bizarre compositions is the cooperation of the artist, writer and scientist.

The sheets of O. Naiden’s works are the planes where the artist, writer, and scientist work together. They prove the existence of that mysterious “unity of the three”, organically combining intelligence and emotion, scholarship and immediacy.

Glib Vyseslavsky

World of Ornaments. Hryhoriy Dovzhenko. 31.05-27.07.2019

Viktoria — Thu, 30 May 2019 07:23:23 +0000

Hryhoriy Dovzhenko
World of Ornaments.
Exposition to the 120th artist’s anniversary

ART 14 Gallery presents an exhibition of graphic works, sketches for monumental objects and some rare photos by Hrygoriy Dovzhenko (1899-1980).
Hrygoriy Dovzhenko’s creativity is well-known and respected among specialists. It belongs to the classical heritage of Ukrainian art. At the beginning of his artistic career the author created monumental paintings and thematic easel paintings and entered the circle of artists who were working together with M. Boychuk. After 1937 Dovzhenko focused on the problems of art synthesis, and created fretwork according to his own technology in many cities of Ukraine. The work over the ornaments in Nova Kakhovka town (1952 – 1955) was particularly important for the author.
In the second half of the 1950s H. Dovzhenko developed and implemented the artistic design of numerous public buildings. For example, House of Culture named after Ivan Franko in Donetsk (1955); House of Culture “Kharchovyk” in Kiev (1956); House of Culture in Drabynets of Cherkasy region (1956); Music and Drama Theater in Rivne (1960). Each time H. Dovzhenko found new nuances of artistic design, which took into account the specific architectural situation, maintained the connection with a local tradition. Simultaneously, the artist participated in the development of interiors of the Kyiv underground central stations such as University, Vokzalna, Arsenalna.
In the 1960s H. Dovzhenko turned to thematic compositions again. An example of such work became a huge mosaic of the cinema “Rovesnik” facade in Kyiv (1971).
The works by H. Dovzhenko – numerous sketches, easel graphics and frescoes are carefully preserved by the artist’s relatives. The part of these works was given to the exhibition by his granddaughter Claudia Dovzhenko, who initiated the preparation of this jubilee exposition.

G. Vysheslavsky

Painting, graphic art. Irina Vysheslavska. 15.02-13.04.2019

Viktoria — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 12:32:07 +0000

Irina was born in Kyiv in the family of a poet Leonid Vyshelyavsky and a philologist and poet Agnesa Baltaga.
She studied at Kyiv Art School named after T.G. Shevchenko (the teacher V. A. Denisov), then at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. Repin as a part of the Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad (St. Petersburg at present) under the supervision of Segal, and at Kiev Art Institute under the supervision of V. Zabashta.
Since 1967 Irina was actively involved in the artistic life of Kiev and Ukraine, but for many years she was persecuted by official institutions for, as an example, western influences in painting. Only in 1975, after being awarded with the prize of all-USSR portrait competition, she was finally accepted to the Union of Artists. In 1984, she presented her first personal exhibition in the prestigious House of Artists Hall on the Crimean Quay in Moscow. Since 1998, Irina has been sharing her life between her native Kyiv and France. There has been a lot of her personal exhibitions as well as participating in collective projects at museums and galleries around Ukraine, France and Canada. Among Irina’s creative favorites there are genre paintings and portraits. Nevertheless, regardless of what is conceived, the main thing in the artist’s work is the empathy of what she has seen. This feature allows her to constantly maintain a fresh and unpredictable view of the world and gives her skills a kind of intuitive and experimental nature. The viewers imperceptibly find themselves embraced by the imagery of her powerful and, at the same time, sophisticated lifestyle. Her drawings contain one more important feature – the exact timing. Being created as a kind of a diary, they convey the atmosphere of past years and become the documents of the time themselves.
I. Vysheslavska’s creativity belongs simultaneously to Ukrainian and French art and exists as a manifestation of the author’s style, an individual search and heritage, free of fashion and fleeting changes of the present.

G. Vysheslavsky

Fragment. Serhiy Zvyagintsev. 30.11-27.01.2019

Viktoria — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 10:16:51 +0000

Serhiy Zvyagintsev’s creative world is amazing in his language, sincerity of feelings, depth of ideas, and all of those are felt by the viewer.

The author doesn’t impose his concept on the viewers. His creative will is to give them the maximum space for their own reflections, to help them form their own impressions of works, their own atmosphere with a stream of associations to go into the fascinating travel by themselves. There is a certain element of interactivity, involving the viewers in co-creation.

But above all there is wonder of the materials, which most of the compositions are made from. They express anxiety, as they are not painting or ready-made. The materials create a transitional state that makes us wake up and, in order to comprehend what has been seen, turn on our knowledge, sensation, intuition.

The author says: “I want a person, who is standing in front of my work, to become a participator in the process of creation, to find their own plot, story, image on the canvas.”

The ART 14 Gallery’s exhibition consists of several series. These are “Fragments”, “Tile”, “Hidden”. Each series, as already mentioned, creates its own atmosphere, which forms the viewer’s feelings and thoughts.

“Fragments” is devoted to how a person can perceive the coexistence of universal and individual in all dimensions of feelings and ideas; their personality and external infinity.

“Tile” represents objects, absorbed into the clay of tiles. They tell the viewer about the time, its space boundaries and the short human time that is protected by these tiles.

“Hidden”. The works of this series give the viewers the opportunity to feel the barely existing boundary between the inner and the outer, our own “I” and its public manifestation, “open and hidden”, which is branched out as “strong – weak, good – bad, artist-viewer, life-death”.

The works by Sergei Zvyagintsev are polyvalent and polysemantic. The viewer does not feel tired looking at them, finding more and more new associations at the intersections of numerous symbols. It definitely captures.

Glib Vysheslavsky

Recreation and Entertainment. Volodymyr Yershikhin. 14.09-10.11.2018

Viktoria — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 10:00:58 +0000

Vladimir Yershikhin is an artist known since the time of the New Ukrainian Wave. The exhibition has a “light” name and drawing style. Its lightness is even a bit provocative. Actually, it shows a professional work, which will remind many of the “art-brut”, “tashisme”, so important for the western contemporary art “informel”, and connoisseurs of the postmodern New Wave will joyfully recognize its powerful breath of irony. And all of them are partially right at the same time.

Behind external playfulness and irony, the artist hid the acute social criticism. He sarcastically compares the primitivism of a today’s common person’s habits with the primitive life of ancient prehistoric humanity. The same mass scale, primitivism, tendency to worship certain things embodying strength, fashion, glamor. For the primitive man, those were totems, while for modern people they are gadgets, or a certain style of life and recreation. For instance, the images of such well-known brands of our time, dreamt about by the majority, as “Vertu”, “Ferrari” and “Porsche” look like totemic images in the artist’s canvases.

The author ridicules gadget- and brand-addiction, mass consciousness – all these new but long-known diseases of humanity: parochialism and philistinism. However, mankind lives, parochialism is spreading, philistinism blossoms, and postmodernists find, after neo-avant-gardists, more and more unsurpassed ideas and forms of sarcastic ridicule for the sake of self-awareness of themselves and society, which can’t stop amusing viewers.

Glib Vysheslavsky

The series “Recreation and Entertainment” is a part of the big project I have been working on recently. The project is devoted to the values of the “consumer society” and speaks about subjects and “rituals” of modern life.

“The title of the series is taken from the headings of magazines and the Internet searches. There are no such things as book reading or friendly conversations, sunset admiration or walks under the moon – all types of “recreation” presented in the pictures are quite material and available for a fee. The irony and socio-critical subtext concerning consumerism of the society are the main semantic trends in this series.”

Volodymyr Yershikhin

Photo projects. Cristina Soiman. 25.05-27.07.2018

Viktoria — Mon, 21 May 2018 08:58:57 +0000

Галерея АRТ 14 представляє виставку румунської фотохудожниці Христини Шойман.

Христина Шойман (Бухарест) підготувала до експозиції три проекти, що розкривають її різнопланову творчість. Фотографії тіней і оголеного тіла в яких конструктивна основа композиції перетинається зі спадком піктореалістів. Це фотографії чуттєвості і настрою сполучені з впливом конструктивізму – типовим стилем в архітектурі старого Бухаресту.
В іншому залі розташований проект фотохудожниці, який вонанещодавно експонувала у Парижі. В основу задуму покладено асоціації, що виникають на перетині сприйняття інсценованих фотографій і текстів. Проект одночасно концептуальний і емоційний, він творчо розвиває лінію абсурдизму, що займає чільне місце в історії культури Румунії. Цей проект авторка зробила спільно з письменником Даном Плешою.
Третій проект Христина Шойман презентує вперше. Це імпресіоністичний щоденник – спогад, натяк на щось інтимне. Це візуалізація настрою і швидкоплинності зроблена засобами фотомистецтва.
Виставка слугує кращому знайомству глядачів з мистецтвом сучасної Румунії.

Гліб Вишеславський