Lady exhibit in ABC Art Gallery

The exhibit is a cross-section of the male collective view of the woman and femininity as such. It includes erotic plots in Viktor Zaretsky’s works (dating back to the 1980s, an exotic thing in Ukrainian art at the time); plastic-formal transformation of the sensual into nu by Borys Buriak and Mykhailo Demtsiu; the carnival nature of events depicted by Petro Sypniak; the unparalleled exquisiteness of strokes in Roman Selsky’s drawings; and the body as a structuring dimension of life in paintings by Oleh Minko and Liubomyr Medvid. This is a kind of intimacy born of confiding dialog between the viewer and the artist in which sacred things are shared and at the same time absorbed.

The ABC Art Gallery is using this project to promote the culture of unhurried and meditative contemplation. The organizers shut out the informational froth that forces you to consume a particular product as quickly as possible and instead offer the delight of relishing continuity in art. Feminine images displayed at the Lady exhibit make visitors do more than just gaze. The line of eroticism is so thin in them that it sometimes disappears behind the drapery or interior design only to intimate that the hidden is always much more erotic than the revealed.

“This project is interesting in that we did not select paintings to suit our conception, as is usually the case… The impression was that the works themselves urged us to make this exhibit. The paintings and drawings of various authors, years, styles and techniques gathered together, as like-minded people, in our halls to silently share about the most precious things. I think that the visitors will sense this special intimate atmosphere without any explanation,” says art critic Viktoria KUDRIAVTSEVA.

Borys Buriak, Orest Hnativ, Mykhailo Demtsiu, Viktor Zaretsky, Liubomyr Medvid, Oleh Minko, Roman Selsky, Petro Sypniak, Mykhailo Turovsky, Petro Bevza, Yurii Skandakov, Oleh Fil, Vasyl Kopaihorenko and Serhii Hnoiovy are (the most legendary) painters represented at the exhibit.

Today, at a time of total voyeurism and exhibitionism, divine eroticism is hard to come by. The culture of those who undress and those who watch them rules out the notion of intimacy as such. Thus, the nakedness that exists as a thing unto itself and does not appeal to be watched, openly or secretively, evokes astonishment rather than admiration. The nature of narcissism is alien to the concept of contemplation, and this holds true for both visual and, in general, sensory level of human perception.

The Lady exhibit in the ABC Art Gallery will be open until September 8.