An atlas of rhythms and emotions

Gold-tinged Uzhhorod, gray Dnipro, earthy Khmelnytskyi shot through with red flashes, green Poltava in lilac mist – the artist has laid out on the canvas the feelings he experienced while staying in these cities. Bozhko has depicted regional capitals in his characteristic abstract style, making them look similar to maps with clear contours, so that the silhouettes of the cities reflect sacred meanings the artist ascribes to them. Overall, this project saw Bozhko picturing 24 administrative centers and Simferopol. “The Feeling of the City” project was launched at the Sky Art Foundation art space in Kyiv.

“The idea was born, it seems, almost a year ago. It all happened rather spontaneously: founder of the Sky Art Foundation Dmytro Paliienko came to my studio and liked one of my paintings as it reminded him of some city’s contours. I was looking for some new form just then, and our common idea was born in that way,” Bozhko recalled.

The artist spent three or four days in every administrative center. “Usually, I drew my impressions from the historic city center,” he told us. “An important factor was talking to the locals. Since I work with abstractions, it is not only visual perception, but also some kind of urban music which are important to me, as I try to discern some rhythm in each of them.”

Portraits of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Simferopol are on display alongside each other, but the artist has not visited them recently. He was to these cities before the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine, and while working on the project, relied on the experiences gained earlier. Bozhko’s portraits of Luhansk and Simferopol have a lot of gray tinge that seemingly devours cities’ colors, while Donetsk is colored black with red flashes, like cinders burning out in a fire. “I understand what is going on in these cities and knew how to portray it. For example, I associate Donetsk with the smell of gunpowder. Donetsk, Luhansk, and Simferopol are ‘sick’ today, but I hope that this sickness will pass,” Bozhko commented.

KHMELNYTSKYI IN “THE FEELING OF THE CITY” PROJECT /  Photo replica by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day

The artist visited many cities for the first time, including Kharkiv and Uzhhorod. Bozhko remarked that all administrative centers were interesting in their own way, and cities are generally engines of the nation which host pulsating cultural life. The artist was upset to find out that many young residents of administrative centers wanted to move elsewhere. Bozhko also asked people what colors they ascribed to their cities, and almost all respondents chose green.

This is Bozhko’s second exhibition in the Sky Art Foundation’s space. Interestingly, a joint project of the artist and his father Ihor Bozhko, a representative of the Odesa school of Non-Conformism, was the opening event in that space after it was launched in the fall of 2015. “This project is completely different, totally unlike the first display of Bozhko’s works we hosted. He has a lot of ideas and images in his mind and founds interesting ways to implement them,” founder of the Sky Art Foundation art charity Paliienko asserted. “Now we have this wide-ranging project involving 25 cities, it also coincided with the 25th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, even though we actually did not give it a thought at first.”

“The Feeling of the City” exhibition will run until October 9.