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PALADINS OF THE BOOK The Diffraction of Texts Project in Kyiv’s Lavra (Monastery) Gallery

24 February, 00:00

Fourteen artists, united in an elegant exposition, later to be shown in Lviv’s Dzyha Art Association, are disturbed by the devaluation of the book as a cu ltural phenomenon in the contemporary world. Perhaps this is most daringly and radically apparent in Pavlo Makov’s graphic cycle. Petro Hancharov’s new graphic language shows virtual reality texts wandering through computer systems. His series appears to present a sorrowful sign of the reader being pressed into intimate contact with the book through soulless technology. In the ceramic composition by Oleksander Mylovzorov letters take on a sinister significance and are transformed into phantoms where Cyrillic letters appear masked as Chinese hieroglyphics.

Perhaps the authors of the installation are more light-hearted than other artists at the «catastrophe of the book.» Hlib Vysheslavsky, for example, made from a bereavement crepe a chalice with a miniature Bible at the bottom.

All the same the main part of the exposition consists in books made by the artists. Yevhen Kozanevych’s and Viktor Didrovsky’s theater books. Dmytro Yakymenko’s reconstruction of ancient Indian and Byzantine books. Viktor Chebannyk’s vellum book covers. Love for and inclination toward the defenseless book in a time of the universalization of the conveyor and technology. On the podiums of the hall are quires from old manuscript Psalters, once bought by Oleksandra Prakhova on Andriyivsky uzviz at five hryvnias for the lot. In consumer society tenderness for the book becomes the privilege of the elect. The artists who created the Diffraction of the Text are among their number.

Book cover by Yevhen Kozanevych, gypsum hands that seem like the exhibition's emblem: The book saves people. But will people save the book?

Newspaper output №:

№3, (1998)

Section

Culture