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The gallery of the Arts Promotion Foundation hosts an exhibition of works by Kateryna Hutnikova and Yuliya Maistrenko-Vakulenko, Kyiv’s two young graphic artists. Titled “The World Is a Space Given to Imagination,” the exhibition is conceptually based on the Temples of Ukraine series that has received a presidential grant. Yet, Temples... are, by all accounts, two “subseries” (four sheets each) because the works by Hutnikova and Maistrenko-Vakulenko are very different and individually marked and, what is more, they very logically and naturally fit in with the oeuvre of each of the two artists.

The authors follow their own way. Ms. Hutnikova still dwells in a gorgeous, minutely thought-out, and theatrical world of kings, queens and jesters, in a refined and cozy space filled with flowers and furs. Her beautiful, sad, and a bit pretentious characters amuse themselves by loving one another, hunting tigers or peacocks, and fishing in a small washbasin crawling with fish and water lilies (Royal Shooting of Peacocks, Royal Fishery, Nightingales Laughing and Crying...). Temples of Ukraine (The Battle of Berestechko, A Prayer, or the Church of Holy Ascension) look very peculiar against this charming, eye-catching but very self-sufficient backdrop. It is apparently Roksolana who fits best into Hutnikova’s world because she seems to be a true sister of the artist’s dreamy queens (The Holy Ghost Church in Rohatyn).

Yuliya Maistrenko-Vakulenko, who almost exclusively creates religion-related graphic images, seems to be in a better position. Still, her oeuvre is not only and not so much depiction of Ukraine’s most well known temples (St. Sophia’s, St. Michael’s Gold- Domed, and Assumption cathedrals in Kyiv and the Church of Borys and Hlib in Chernihiv) as the traditional display of the complex and multiple allegories based on an intricate unity and interaction of symbols and senses. The artist executed in the same spirit her other new works, such as the diptych Manna from Heaven: The Whims of Moses’ People and Dreaming about a Sky-High Tower.