Trip to Alluring Still Lifes
The Irena Gallery is hosting the personal exhibition of Dmytro Kavsan, a young but already renowned Kyiv artist. The show chose a playful and, simultaneously somewhat mysterious title of Alluring Still Lifes.
Frankly, one cannot even understand at first glance what a cunning and ruthless game the artist starts with his credulous audiences. So everything begins with the well- executed imitation of Dutch still lifes. This stage could be called satisfied perception: indeed, the author selected universally known and, so to speak, hackneyed works as examples, with all the required chimerical-glittering multicolored bowls and cups, and the hanging spirals of lemon peels. In this case, next comes the stage of a “pleasant surprise”: the point is that Dmytro Kavsan’s still lifes are teeming with tiny and, owing to this, still more demanding characters. In all probability, it should be considered the artist’s ironic caprice that all of them should wear eighteenth century attire. Ladies with high-set powdered hairstyles and their shameless companions climb up the stalks of outlandish plants, looking out of all kinds of holes, wandering in the thick bushes around the tavern, swinging on lemon peels, and doing thousands of other equally important things. All these gallant dwarfs remain terribly busy. It is funny and thrilling to follow their adventures, although what Kavsan ends up with is something like a simian nursery rather than a refined music box, the only difference being that some of the miniature gentlemen in wigs and frocks decided to take their own lives and now dangle on the handle of a glittering cauldron without disturbing the others at all.
However, the fleeting reminiscences of Jean-Antoine Watteau proved to be not entirely accidental. His lovers are known to have once embarked for the island of Citera. Oddly enough, Dmytro Kavsan’s lovemaking (or whatever the case) characters arrive at the island of the Alluring Still Lifes in exactly the same way, i.e., on boats (or rather, with due account for stylistic unity on gondolas). Accordingly, tablecloths become unknown seas, pouring out of the tables in the shape of formidable waterfalls, which make the course of events extraordinarily thrilling (this time kayaks rather than gondolas perish in the waves) and very gripping: the boldest characters dive like Tarzan into the waterfall (fatal accidents are not ruled out here either). Incidentally, about the local amusements. If you are tired of lovemaking, why not hitch a ride on an elephant? Or panther. Or play hide-and-go-seek. Thus it is by not at all necessary to hang yourself out of boredom.
The second stage of Kavsan’s still life scrutiny inevitably gives way to the third. This is when the already exhausted spectator rapturously watches whether or not the gentleman in green will catch the lady in blue (at least what blue is still left on her). And if he does catch her, what (and how) will he do to her? It is next to impossible to choose a name for the third stage. This could be called with endless reservations total immersion. What in? Perhaps in the same tablecloths that tightly surround the Alluring Still Lifes.
