“Letters on Heaven”

Extremely composed, as always, breath­takingly elegant, dignified “pat­riarch” of modern Ukrainian art, as many refer to him, Oleksandr Dubovyk wel­comed guests of his exhibition that opened at Mironova Gallery.

 Once a quite successful “social realist painter” with fully predictable bright future willingly “threw” himself to the ranks of the underground because of his thoughts about the development of mo­dern art and the search for new art forms. Even thought after Dubovyk willingly became an “informal artist,” he received a pretty high status “in the narrow circles” of connoisseurs of such type of art, he deliberately deprived himself of peaceful exis­tence in the “land of developed socialism.” But today his exhibitions are held in world largest museums and galleries. His paintings are part of the “golden fund” of those museums and private collections.

 Art critics are constantly trying to enlist Dubovyk’s paintings, very powerful not only for the artistic and emotional content, but also on the philosophical level, as some “ism” – abstractionism, for example. Here is what the artist himself told us recently speaking about his creative work:

 “The thing is that all the divisions into various ‘isms’ are rather conventional. It is simply a maneuver of art criticism. Just like philosophy is a personal vision of the world and there is no universal system. Jose Ortega once said an interesting thing that of all the possible philosophies Immanuel Kant chose criticism because it fit his own ideas. I, for example, am often considered as a postmodernist artist. It is not postmodernism, because I am interested in returning to system. Barth completely denied the system, he was afraid of his own system, called the system, even his own, a totalitarian phenomenon because it always meant ‘imposing.’ This is a classic postmodern move. But I still want to think that ideas can exist only in a context of a society, let’s say, of European society. We absolutely do not understand and will never understand all the other cultures, no matter how hard we try. That’s why there is no need to strive to create something universal. And if we focused on the European culture, it would be possible to create a system. What will it be like? It will be an aesthetic, ethic, and philosophical system. These constituents can help unite, we have to go back to the roots anyways since too much has been destroyed.

 “Figurative world, filled with meaning, is changed in the artist’s works by very specific geometric symbols, which, however, everyone can interpret in their own way. Not by chance Dubovyk called his exhibition ‘Letters on Heaven.’ Come look at them, search for your own meaning, and enjoy the art.”

Photo replicas by Mykola TYMCHENKO, The Day