April 11-14, 2019, Fashion Industry Gallery, 1807 Ross Avenue, 75201, Dallas, TX, USA, booth B7
Voloshyn Gallery is proud to announce its participation in the Dallas Art Fair. During its first time at the fair, Voloshyn Gallery will present a group project of four Ukrainian artists: Lesia Khomenko, Mikhailo Deyak, Vlada Ralko and Zhanna Kadyrova.
The Dallas Art Fair is an international contemporary art fair held annually in mid-April during the official Dallas Arts Month. It is currently in its 11 year. In 2019, the Dallas Art Fair will feature projects of approximately a hundred galleries, offering the visitors a glimpse of contemporary art of North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. This year marks an important shift for the Dallas Art Fair: March saw the opening of 214 Projects exhibition space. The fair’s organizers intend to offer Dallas Art Fair participants an opportunity to exhibit their projects there throughout the year.
In her new series Lesia Khomenko and Her School, presented at the Voloshyn Gallery booth, Lesia Khomenko will continue her programmatic deconstruction of figurative imagery and analysis of all elements of a painting. In Lesia Khomenko’s practice, deconstruction requires engaging not only with visual imagery, but also with all the painting’s components, including its material aspects. While working on this series, Lesia Khomenko invited the students who took her course in contemporary art at the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts to collaborate. Yet it might be a stretch to describe this joint effort as a full-fledged collaboration, since the artist used the photographs submitted by her students at her request in her paintings without directly involving them in the process. As to the material aspect of the deconstruction, the artist uses synthetic canvas, biflex fabric and synthetic acrylics for maximum elasticity. This allows the artist to transform mounting a canvas onto a frame, one of her least favorite processes, into the main meaning-producing part of the work, since it becomes an instrument for deforming depicted figures. Lesia Khomenko and Her School project draws the viewer's attention to the monotonous technical process of producing and framing an artwork, transforming it into a self-sufficient artistic gesture which ultimately determines the look of the image.
The booth will also feature Khomenko’s earlier work from The Polar Bear Swimmers series (2007), a continuation of her Giants project. Given that sports championships may be treated as an important component of politics (namely, as a substitute for war), and heroic athletes may appear as heroes of our times, the artist grew interested in the tradition of winter swimming. Winter swimming is not officially recognized as a sport, and its practitioners tend to depart from the canon of beauty of an athletic body. Nevertheless, winter swimming is a metaphor of a uniquely dramatic and heroic endurance, which the artist believes to be representative of Ukrainian culture.
Lesia Khomenko was born in 1980 in Kyiv, where she lives and works now. She graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in 2004. A co-founder and member of the R.E.P. group since 2004, and of the curatorial union Khudrada since 2008. Was a resident of the Center for Contemporary Art at the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” in 2005-2006, and a resident of the Leipzig International Art (LIA) project with the R.E.P. group in 2008. Her works have been displayed in many personal and group exhibitions, including at the main project of the Kyiv Biennale Arsenale (2012), in the National Art Museum of Ukraine, at White Box Gallery in New York, MUMOK in Vienna and Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. Lesia Khomenko is a PinchukArtCentre Prize nominee (2009, 2011, and 2013), and a Future Generation Art Prize (founded by Viktor Pinchuk) as a part of R.E.P. group in 2012; she received Kazimir Malevivh Prize in 2012 and 2016. Her works were presented at viennacontemporary2018.
Mikhailo Deyak’s oeuvre will be represented by works from two series: Space and Genesis. Space is a series of minimalistic landscapes of restrained composition and complex palette. The artist doesn’t try to impose his vision or thoughts on the viewers, trusting them to enter a dialogue with the work and themselves. Space is primarily a psychological project about the inner workings of humankind. The leading feature of the series is the fact that the artist has chosen to use glass as the base/surface for these paintings. It's no coincidence that the artist chose this material, having grown up in the Transcarpathia, the region famous for its icon painting on glass. Deyak creates the Space series, adopting this ancient technique while modifying it to make it more contemporary.
Genesis is a series of metal objects that Mikhailo Deyak has been working on over the course of the last couple of years. These objects constitute a singular document of the artist's inspirations and influences, focusing not so much on the plot but rather on conveying fleeting emotions. These sculptures are aggressive towards their environment, their inherent inner dynamic setting them on the collision course with their surroundings. This dynamic allows viewers to see and read the images from various perspectives, developing new interpretations for the forms. The works from the Genesis series have been exhibited during the art week at Basel (Switzerland), at Voloshyn Gallery (Kyiv, Ukraine), at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York, and at the Joseph Bokshay Transcarpathian Regional Art Museum (Uzhhorod, Ukraine). In July 2018, the Lviv National Opera hosted the first solo presentation of the Genesis series.
Mikhailo Deyak was born in 1984 in the village of Zolotarevo (Khust District, the Transcarpathian Region). He graduated from A. Erdeli Uzhhorod Art College and the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (Kyiv). His works map the intersection between neo-expressionism and minimalism, and include experiments with various materials. Voloshyn Gallery has an exclusive contract with the artist, and over the course of this 3-year-long cooperation, Deyak's works have been exhibited at several international art fairs, including VOLTA NY, and the Scope Art Show in Basel (Switzerland), Miami and New York, as well as viennacontemporary. The artist’s works often appear at auctions: over the last couple of years, five of his works sold at the Phillips Auction. Mikhailo Deyak is widely exhibited: for example, in March 2017 the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York hosted his solo show. He is currently participating in the Unlimited residency in New York. He lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Voloshyn Gallery will also present Fashion Show, a series of graphic works by the Ukrainian expressionist Vlada Ralko. The artist herself has described the series in the following fashion: “Bodies traumatized by fashion. Or, more broadly, bodies traumatized by culture. (Imitative culture stitched together like Frankenstein’s creature can crush and eviscerate like a cold-blooded murderer.) And yet, my case study is based on fashion, which reproduces itself at accelerating breakneck speed. Fashion no longer cares for bodies: it is enchanted with itself, and is dying the death of Narcissus. Before now, sophisticated clothing would add to bodies, lending them new volume and shape, or would rediscover bodies altogether, whereas now clothing decides the fate of bodies not in tandem with bodies as such, but with other items of clothing. Bodies are relegated to the role of a dead dummy occasionally fine-tuned, ostensibly to fit fashion’s demands, but in reality out of sheer boredom. Bodies dismembered by clothing, or empty clothes as such, become a metaphor for the alienation of everything pertaining to culture from normal pressing human needs, such as hydrating or breathing. Everything human (simulated or dead) is alienated, that is, from everything that is alive yet purely biological. Bodies encumbered with dead cultural legacy succumb and start to transform into items of clothing, or flee altogether. The disappearance of the ‘protagonist’ does not seem to affect simulated culture all that much, which becomes abundantly clear in ‘new collections.’”
Vlada Ralko was born in 1969 in Kyiv. She graduated from the T.H. Shevchenko Republican Art School in 1987, and from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (the workshop of Professor V. Shatalin) in 1994. A member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine since 1994, she is widely exhibited in Ukraine and abroad. Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Zhylmassyv (The Housing Estate) 2019 is Zhanna Kadyrova’s new installation from her Zhylmassyv (The Housing Estate) project that she’s been working on since 2015. Kadyrova constructs her stylized buildings of transparent plexiglass bricks. Photographs of exteriors and interiors of real residential buildings are printed on opposite sides of each brick. The project engages with the fact that the division of spaces into public and private is always provisory. Additionally, by offering the viewer a look at other people’s homes, Kadyrova questions the possibility of protected privacy.
Voloshyn Gallery booth will also exhibit a sculpture from Kadyrova’s early series Diamonds (2006). The artist molds her trademark construction materials, including ceramic tiles, cement and construction foam, into shapes resembling cut diamonds. By creating a resonance between sophisticated forms and “low,” quotidian materials, the artist explores the mechanism of price formation and taunts the logic of consumerist society.
Zhanna Kadyrova was born in 1981 in the town of Brovary, just outside Kyiv, Ukraine. She graduated from the Department of Sculpture of the T.H. Shevchenko State Comprehensive Art School (Kyiv) in 1999. She juggernauted multiple art groups, exhibitions and performances, including participating in and co-founding the R.E.P. group (Ukrainian abbreviation for Revolutionary Experimental Space). She curates exhibitions at LabGarage (Kyiv). In 2009, she created The Monument to a New Monument in the town of Sharhorod, Ukraine. She was awarded the special PinchukArtCentre prize in 2011, the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize for her Shape of Light (in Public Art category) in April 2012, the Kazimir Malevich Prize in December 2012, and the PinchukArtCentre Main Prize in 2013. She participated in many international exhibitions, including the Ukrainian pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Nouvelles Vagues, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2013). In 2014, she joined the art residence of the Baró Galeria (São Paulo, Brazil). In 2016, she took part in an exhibition at Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris). In 2018, her work was selected for PULSE Prize as the best solo project of PULSE Miami Beach 2018. Her works will be presented at the 58th Venice Biennale. The artist lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Founded in October 2016 by Max and Julia Voloshyn, Voloshyn Gallery specializes in contemporary art. It showcases a broad range of media in contemporary art, hosting solo and group exhibitions.
Voloshyn Gallery fosters the integration of Ukrainian art into global cultural processes, representing its artists at international art fairs and shows in Europe and the US. Voloshyn Gallery aims to discover exceptional talent, with particular focus on emerging and mid-career artists.
Its cutting-edge exhibition space is located in Kyiv’s cultural and historical center, on Tereshchenkivska Street, in a historic 1913 building formerly owned by a renowned entrepreneur and philanthropist N.A. Tereshchenko. The collector and philanthropist Bohdan Khanenko bought the building for his wife Varvara, renovating it as a revenue house. Its second floor was envisioned as an exhibition and storage space for Khanenko’s expanding museum of fine arts.
Maksym and Julia Voloshyn have been active in the art business since 2006. Their first gallery, Mystetska Zbirka Art Gallery, specialized in classical and post-war 20th century Ukrainian art. In 2015, the Voloshyns made it to the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.
Fashion Industry Gallery
1807 Ross Avenue
75201, Dallas, TX, USA
Voloshyn Gallery
Kyiv, 13 Tereshchenkivska Str., enter the 2nd courtyard through the archway
+38 067 467 00 07, +38 044 234 14 27, www.voloshyngallery.art, info@voloshyngallery.art
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