• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
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

A Barrage of Pictures and Gestures

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Aesthetic Kyiv, perhaps propelled by summer solar energy, in recent days has produced a virtual barrage of interesting exhibitions. Wednesday was especially rich in vernissages: first at the Taras Shevchenko Museum a grand retrospective opened of one of Ukraine's most prominent painters, Ivan Marchuk, and in the evening artistic Bohemia concentrated on Andriyivsky uzviz. There, in the Ivan Kavalaridze Memorial Museum paintings, graphics, and sculpture were presented by outstanding artist Viktor Zaretsky in a show promising to become a minor sensation because it destroys the stereotypes about this talented master's work, an artist who in his lifetime was known as the Klimt of Kyiv.

In the Karas Atelier radicals of the 1990s presented their answer to the systematic nature, psychological concreteness, and color of much of Zaretsky's work. Odesa natives Oleksandr Roitburd and Vasyl Riabchenko exhibited in one of the capital's most "conceptual" galleries a series of original paintings and graphics, while Oleksandr Druhanov of Kyiv, who joined them, looked more like a poseur. In the context of the variety in painting and culture displayed (the previous day Tadzio presented the wonderful work of Roman Kukhar), the most banal installation was his Language of Pride. This same artist adhered to the fashion of artistic geste, which unfortunately more and more often disturbs the harmony and sense of contemporary artists.

 

Rubric: