Visitors from Lviv
A new exposition at the Persona Gallery is titled A Visit from Lviv, featuring thre e Lviv artists: Mykhailo Demtsiu, Serhiy Savchenko, and Andriy Petrovsky. The first two are painters and the latter a glassblower. However, these definitions are rather conventional. Serhiy Savchenko, for example, also started with glassblowing and this has apparently had an impact on his subsequent paintings. Perhaps this “hidden unity” lends the Visit display a remarkable integrity which would otherwise be hard to achieve, owing to the presence of three strong individualities.
Mykhailo Demtsiu’s pictures are not even a feast, rather an utter triumph of color, which is actually in keeping with the Carpathian artistic tradition, amateur as well as professional (for example, The Golden Colors of the Carpathian Mountains, Hutsul Ksenia, and Lviv). The life-asserting flaming Carpathian scenery is invariably present in his works. And it was with him during his trip to Holland (Gretsiel). “Mykhailo Demtsiu’s paintings remind one of a mythical Carpathian warlock controlling various elements,” says Lesia Avramenko, manager of the Persona Gallery and curator of the exhibit.
Serhiy Savchenko is the youngest artist on display. Perhaps that is why the romantic, almost fairy-tale mood of his pictures looks so natural, so appealing. His penchant is for leaving an image enigmatic, the story unfinished. He captures and perpetuates that very strange instant when objects and phenomena quite familiar and seemingly real suddenly begin to emanate some special inner luminescence. In real life this happens in a fracture of a second and one is instantly in doubt whether the thing has actually happened. In Serhiy’s paintings this light is not an instantly disappearing flash but rather rolling colors. An excellent colorist, he avoids “the only correct line,” allowing his world to change, living a life of its own (for example, Portrait of Povitulia, Spring Still Life, and Still Life with a Peacock Feather).
Andriy Petrovsky’s glass naturally remains what it is, glass. That is the starting axiom. He demonstrates not virtuoso technique (“You’ll never guess what this thing is made from!”), but the staggering capabilities of his favorite material, which can be perfectly transparent and totally opaque, colored, colorless, rigid, and pliable, visually weightless and just as visually so heavy that no one would even think of lifting it. The genre opportunities of glass are as diversified, from Torsos to a “metaphysical joke” and most cherished dream come true (Fantasy Flight in Time), even though his dreams come true in some way or another in all his works. However, the artist obviously prefers his Myths series, primarily those dealing with antiquity (Herculean Amphora and Helen of Troy).
