The absolute of color
Philosophy on canvas in Mykola Malyshko’s new exhibit in Kyiv
The sky is blue, leaves are green, and snow is white. Artist Mykola Malyshko has made an attempt to render the blue, green, and white as such, as an absolute that personifies myriads of phenomena, thoughts, and experiences. Malyshko’s exhibit “The Color” is currently open at the National Center of Traditional Culture “Ivan Honchar Museum.” The exposition includes more than 20 works, a fraction of more than a hundred created in 2015-16. This is a joint project with the residence Velykyi Pereviz. Art center Ya Gallery, which has exhibited Malyshko’s works several times, is a partner.
“Color. Language. Thinking. Its rendition in the element of color… A dialog with color. I communicate with color and derive emotional and intellectual pleasure and equilibrium from it,” wrote Malyshko in the annotation to his exhibit.
The artist has done an extensive preparation reading works on color and its history and on physical properties of light. He also studied the changes of color in various light. “We are still halfway through, this is not yet how I meant it to be. In the first room landscapes are exhibited, in the spirit of older painting tradition. The color there is used to get a message over. Meanwhile, works from the second room use color as a means of broadcasting emotions. This is an appeal to human soul, to man’s inner world,” tells Malyshko to The Day. “Color can express everything connected with life: human psychology, a person’s entire world, knowledge and experience they operate with.”
Malyshko’s works carry a powerful philosophical message. He actually was personally acquainted with philosopher Serhii Krymskyi and took part in the project “Sophiс Existential Symbols.” The purport of the project was to use art as a means to render the sophic idea formulated by the thinker. “When the artists exhibited their works, mine was in the center. Then Serhii [Krymskyi] said: ‘You think that you are building this construction. You are wrong: it is building you.’ He was a good man. He also spoke about the spirit above Sophia. This is how he changed our seemingly trite exhibit with his thought,” remembers the painter.
As a matter of fact, Malyshko’s recent works have been changing him as well. “In my studio there are countless pictures, but after these works they have sort of faded into gray and become expressionless and unpleasant,” shares the artist. “When such changes take place, you need to depart with the past: it is becoming mere, banal past. Yet nevertheless it builds me and spiritually raises me higher. These works are not only about me, they are also about those who came even if to catch a glimpse of them. Maybe they will not be imprinted in the viewer’s memory, but they do have transformative power. That is why my work has some sense.”
Malyshko is better known to the public as a sculptor. Meanwhile in an interview a couple of years ago he said he was a painter, and it was color that attracted him the most. Valerii Sakharuk, the curator of the exhibit who has also worked with Malyshko the sculptor, remarks: “It surprised me to realize that Mykola has been painting for 55 years. His first works date back to the early 1960s. His environment back then was unique. In included Ivan Marchuk, Fedir Tetianych and other authors. And Mykola Malyshko was never among those artists who were favored by the regime; in fact, he was a persona non grata among them. He has preserved this purity until today. This sensation vibrates in his every canvas and in his every word.”
Malyshko’s pictures are hard to describe with words, and they need not be. They must be felt. “I agreed to hold this exhibit without much analysis, just subconsciously. I understood that it is our thing,” confesses Petro Honchar, director general of the Ivan Honchar Museum. “Then I tried to look into the reason why I had agreed at once. I guess these works and artifacts of traditional culture have something genuine in them. In these works by Mykola Malyshko even the darkest colors radiate light. Traditional art has a similar effect on me. Mykola wanted to show color as such, he sacralizes it. When he creates he in fact worships colors.”
Exhibition “Mykola Malyshko. The Color” will be open at the Ivan Honchar Museum through March 19.
