Love and Creation

In the framework of the seventh ART KYIV Contemporary (you can find more details about the event in The Day’s reporter Dmytro Desiateryk’s article “Chic, Glam, and Beauty”), the artist Zinaida Likhachova presented her project. Likhachova’s two conceptual pyramids, Love and Creation, are situated in the center of the Mystetsky Arsenal’s main exhibit hall.

The pyramid Love is made of eight cubes, each of which represents a certain entity. They all differ from each other by their content, texture, density, quality, and the origin of the materials. The nature of the cubes, as we can learn from the author’s notice under the exhibit, is as diverse as people, plants, animals, weather, and seasons. Yet despite all differences, there is unity and harmony among all the elements. Each of them fits in the world’s geometrical kaleidoscope, with love being their connective tissue. Only this feeling is capable of joining the apparently unjoinable.

The pyramid Creation is a symbolic representation of human’s intrauterine development. The egg at its top symbolizes birth. “Nine cubes are the nine stages of human physical development, concealed from human eyes in real life. Nine is a sacral number. The nine-month period is the time when our thoughts and ideas are born, and also the time of their development and materialization,” reads the note under the exhibit. Each cube is painted in a color which a human fetus has at different stages of its development.

Unfortunately, the author was not able to be present at the opening of ART KYIV Contemporary. However, The Day managed to talk to Likhachova after the event.

Despite the fact that you missed the opening, you have apparently acquainted yourself with the exhibits of the seventh ART KYIV Contemporary during its preparation. Which artist and platform did you find special?

“I wish I had seen all the platforms. When I was at the Mystetsky Arsenal, they were just being assembled. Yet I was able to see something: the painter Oleksandr Roitburt’s new works, Oksana Levenia-Konstiantynivska’s doors and, of course, the artistic space by the exhibit’s curator Oleksandr Soloviov.”

What does participating in ART KYIV Contemporary mean for you personally?

“Good question. I have to honestly confess that I wasn’t going to take part in this year’s ART KYIV Contemporary. The works I present here were being prepared for Miami River Art Fair 2012, where they had already been shortlisted. It was absolutely unexpected that we were able to finish them earlier than planned. Thus, the participation in ART KYIV Contemporary is rather a spontaneous decision, but it does not make it less cerebral for me. This is my way to communicate with the Ukrainian audience. Each of my projects carries a message, and it is important that it reaches its addressees.”

What inspired your special project Love and Creation?

“Desire. Actually, I dreamed about the vertical pyramid Love. Various shapes made of various materials had to be combined, one of them being sound. I was puzzled and excited, and I consulted engineers, trying to figure out how it could be implemented. In the long run, I decided to make a transparent cube which everyone could fill with their own meaning. When everything was ready, it dawned on me that this object had to be called ‘love.’ Only love can join the unjoinable, and only love is capable of the impossible.”

Sculpture is a new form of art for you. How do you feel in it?

“For me, the quest for new materials and forms of their conveyance is always exciting.”

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We would like to remind our readers that until recently they could get acquainted with Likhachova’s art on the catwalk. As a fashion designer, she made her debut two years ago at the Oxford Fashion Week. Later she prepared collections for fashion shows in Ukraine, Russia, and Georgia. However, quite recently (in fact, just on the eve of the 15th Ukrainian Fashion Week) she announced the end of her career in fashion design and closed down her shop.

“Now I give more time to art. And I feel very much free. Fashion has a lot of rules and limitations, while art gives you freedom,” said Likhachova as she shared her impressions with The Day. The artist’s husband, chief of the president’s Administration Serhii Liovochkin supports his wife’s choice. “The main thing is that she should realize herself, no matter what shape or form this self-realization takes. Whatever, if it makes her happy,” said he to The Day.

The author of these lines met the couple on the eve of polling day at the Kyiv Fashion Days, where they came to see the British designer Jean-Pierre Braganza’s collection S/S 2013, which made headlines at the recent fashion weeks in London. Apparently, Likhachova and Liovochkin’s visit was no mere coincidence: according to the British designer, his collection had been inspired by Likhachova’s works. Braganza used the motifs of her paintings as prints on the fabrics in his collection.

“This collection reflects the conception of my drawings. It is all very abstract, but conceptual. It is an impulse. He got it and reflected it in his works,” shared Likhachova. However, she admitted that this experience was a turning point of sorts for her. “Since childhood I have been used to keeping my works intact after having completed them, while he went and shredded them. But he did it in a very pretty way,” said she.

“There are crowds of visitors, which means that it is interesting. She is always painting something. Now her pictures are on someone else’s dresses. I think it is an interesting experience for her,” said Liovochkin as he commented on Braganza’s collection.

Inesa Fedchyshyn, an art critic, admitted to having got “true esthetic pleasure” from the collection. “It is very European: practical and at the same time spectacular. Zinaida’s prints revived Jean-Pierre Braganza’s asymmetrical, architectural models, making them more feminine, warm, and tender.”