By Yuliya Volkhonovych
The Triptych Gallery on Andriyivsky Uzviz, welcomes all admirers of the most ancient drink - tea, and experts in kettles to an exhibition. The exposition presents the ceramics of Nelia Isupova of Kyiv and graphic of Kharkiv artist Pavlo Makov.
The ceramist created kettles joyful and sunny as spring, using unusual shapes and colors. The kettles show blooming flowers, nestling birds, and miraculous metamorphoses in general. At the same time the kettles in the graphics of Pavlo Makov are reserved and serious, somewhat like their author. His work seems to be better known in the West than in Ukraine. Of late, he refused the role of creator and artist and says would like to be just a collector.
Certainly, a kettle may draw people’s attention by what is inside it. For this reason I have even wrote a non-pretentious aphorism: “The only thing the tea sees before its death, when it drowns in boiling water, is the darkness and the hollow of the kettle”. I think of a kettle as of a Medieval zindan (a torture cauldron) an execution tool used by mankind for three thousand years.
In general, in both his art and kettles Pavlo Makov is interested in a relationship between dreams and reality.
Art, he says, is a main source of information for the future. We would have hardly known the people’s life in Ancient Greece or Egypt if we had only their manuscripts. Fine and applied art more specifically (at the subconscious level) makes us comprehend information about the reality of the time. This is why I think of the art as of a science and research process related to visual images.
The kettle is quite a necessary thing in the household. Each person selects a kettle better matching his nature, temper, and taste. And then everybody drinks the fragrant tea. As people say: “Only tea is better than tea.” And maybe the kettle.
Photo by Oleksiy Stasenko, The Day:
One question: which teapot do drink from?







