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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

And Art-Fest Flows...

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

By Oleh SYDOR-HIBELYNDA, Art-Line

One of the key arguments against the existence of Noah's Ark, and, simultaneously,
the Flood, is the complex relations between its inhabitants.

The "two of every sort of every living thing " maxim does not mean their
desired compatibility. Folklore long ago converted Noah's Ark into a transportable
twin of the tower of Babel, for there was also confusion on the ark, come
to think of it. The representatives of the Enlightenment (followed by Soviet
atheists) philosophized, creating animals that consumed themselves. The
present-day West has a simpler view of this problem, although even there
the ancient tale should be taken with a grain of salt. In a French novel
of 1980s, where the narrative thread is stranded over the image of Noah's
Ark, one of the ill-fated beasts asks with trepidation, "And what do you
think those people lived on? They lived on us!" The creature that made
such a disclosure managed to escape the grinding of teeth and obscurity
of the stomach only because it was born a termite and thus had no carnivorous
interest in people. And getting ahead of our story: is this the secret
of survivability of the so-called alternative projects in the sea of commerce,
which seems to be able to engulf absolutely everything that still flutters
and has not yet been contracted?

But no. Art-Fest is unsinkable: as one old Russian song goes, our proud
ark won't surrender to the enemy: nirvana is inevitable. Ukraine expects
heroic action from the Art-Fest, although it was fit out quite shabbily
(a variant of a popular saying: "each people has the Art-Fest it deserves").
No doubt, this Art-Fest denied itself its former splendor (or flash, as
its adherents might say): there are few galleries, and still fewer artists
(could they have eaten each other?!), but this has revealed even more expressively
the structure of a total dismay at the end of the twentieth century: a
multi-deck ship (the Ark, in our version, not the Titanic).

The lower deck (the ground floor of the Ukrainian House); in the center
- a bony fish carkass, a gnawed edge of an aquatic monster, or the hull
of a sunken galleon. Its creator (Petro Bevza) called it a derivative of
his own work, Boat - a singular compound of a boat, a wing and a
bridge (all those are the theme of his pictures). But then he confesses,
"Well, it's the remnants of Noah's Ark... after the Flood!"

The second deck: a toy paper ship having the size of a good motorboat,
like a huge varenyk, carefully made by a group of Velyka Zhytomyrska
artists. The ship was supposed to be launched at the closing of the Art-Fest.
But we will return to this later.

Coming down to the lower deck again, (i.e., to the ground floor), one
would notice a Famous Captains Club, that is to say a national art-rating.
It is stranger than the Golden Section contest held in previous years,
although it was based on polling well-known artists and art critics.

The post-modernists floated over, in a bunch, to the spacious quarters
of Soloviov's Pinakoteka (again to the second deck), where there
is no Savadov, but Klymenko. No Tsaholov, but a lot of Vlada Ralko. And
instead of Tystol, his first associate Reunov. Holosiy is represented indirectly,
in a video version of the Aleinikov brothers (although at least two Ukrainian
museums and one gallery carefully keep his paintings). Soloviov is not
hiding his tiredness: there was not enough funds to bring his best works
from Odesa and Moscow, and many paintings that have been exhibited are
accidental, and the result is quite natural - many things may bring about
in one's mind half- forgotten and banal suspicion: can "they" paint at
all? And that shock someone? And accident turns into an almost saving make-believe
reply.

In the bilge, there are "colonial goods" (if one would interpret that
way the gems of the gray-haired player, a ballet advertisement in ANION
or Fotozow group's colored photos of distant countries: very nice pictures
of our guys living in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and somewhere else, while
on the other side of the cubicle, a beautiful seven meter ornamental panel
by Oksana Kyrpenko).

And in the wardroom, there are "jolly fellows", a series of self-portraits
in the Iryna Gallery - a saving and original gambit that gives a sort of
insurance from wall-paper monotony. The most comical is the self-portrait
of Oleksandr Mykhailytsky: a surprised face of the artist amid the scrolls
of an ebony Corinthian capital. However, the most unique down-artist is
Borys Dovhal, whose works were exhibited by Dyrdovsky in a section separated
from the profanatory mainstream of the festive commotion by a black portiere.
None of the works of this artist, who has been painting over seven years
and created around 7,000 pieces of art, is for sale. Commerce shall not
pass.

In order to survive, the Art-Fest should deviate a bit from its established
role, and stop to be Art-Fest par excellence. The legendary Variag becomes
a pleasure boat, and Titanic is ready to sink as requested - jolly and
daily.

This time, the Art-Fest flagship is surrounded by a flotilla of barks,
baidarkas, sloops, gunboats, and whaling ships. They do not seem to determine
its face, but their striped flags drape its withering charm. On the last
day of the Art-Fest, a remarkable event occurred in the Central Cultural
and Recreation Park near a structure that resembles a donjon (in reality
it was a water-tower, of course). Three very well-known, vivid artists
- Oleksandra Prahova, Andriy Bludov and Mao Mao - hung out four huge canvases
adorned with decorative spots and hieroglyphs, and quotations from Lao-tse
and Confucius. The authors called their creation A Letter to the Sky.
The experience of the land-art, despite its tempting facility has never
been represented to such extent in Kyiv. Usually "sand calligraphy" was
conveyed from the open air to the galleries, and not the other way around
(last time, by Valiyev in Soviart).

The heavy Soviart submarine, patrolling the Art-Fest, was sanctified
by a mysterious labyrinth built by the Germans (and Viktoria Dembnovytska):
spectators, like fishes in an aquarium, were wandering along the fragile
passages between the transparent network, under which a number of lined-up
alarm-clocks were ticking, counting off...

Finis! The paper ship, as we have promised, began to move very
graciously and disappeared under the horizon. Everyone thought it would
sink, but it sailed on.

 

IV International Art Festival closes in Kyiv
Rubric: