“I will share my warmth with the eternal bird”

The Tadzio Gallery hosts Valentyna Yevmenenko’s show called I will Share my Warmth With the Eternal Bird just as two years ago at the same gallery. Of course, it is not a mistake. It is the artist’s credo. The reason is the striking wholeness of her world. From the outset she determined her objective — rather, task — and made it known to one and all. This is a paradoxical task: demonstrating the diversity of the boundless world, her own world which is not just unique, but also unknown to anyone except the artist. It is a world existing only in her imagination. She has for many years derived new topics and images from it, never repeating them, because they cannot be repeated. Just like the real world, Valentyna’s has not in the least been reduced by giving away all those topics and images. A situation reminiscent of Borges. As for purely artistic associations, one is reminded of Chagall, then Gauguin, and then a host of others.

This year’s Tadzio display is made up of paintings, prints, batiks, and tapestries. Each is a perfectly complete individual work of art, yet all are perceived as fragments or, more precisely, as splashes of one huge world. Even though filled with cosmic and cosmogonic symbols, this world has no intention to rest in peace. On the contrary, it is dynamic on the verge of aggressiveness. Its inhabitants, women, goats, roosters, fishes, horses, sirens, angels, white-stone temples, and palm trees race from one picture, batik, or tapestry to the next, caught in a fast, merry, and slightly scary dance.