Voloshyn Gallery is proud to announce its participation in Vienna Contemporary art fair for the first time, and is happy to represent the works of five artists: Maria Sulymenko, Zhanna Kadyrova, Anastasiia Podervianska, Lesia Khomenko and Mikhailo Deyak.
Vienna Contemporary is a contemporary art fair, held annually in the 4th week of September at the Marx Halle exhibition center. This year’s program includes more than 400 artists representing 118 galleries from 27 countries. Vienna Contemporary offers its visitors an original perspective on the contemporary art scene, unique in focusing on art from Central and Eastern Europe.
Voloshyn Gallery booth will feature the project The Glass World of People and Things by Maria Sulymenko, a German artist of Ukrainian origins. Her understated laconic watercolors highlight the atmosphere of whimsical unreality Sulymenko depicts in her works. The artist stated that, instead of setting concrete goals or coming up with theoretical concepts, she explores both what she sees and the way she sees it in her works. The desire to convey the atmosphere comes first. “I always liked office spaces, these strange, mysterious, empty planes endowed with their own rituals and hierarchies. What’s going on there? What do people do? Maybe they just idle about, or maybe they are developing plans for world domination. I’m always passionate about my characters, no matter how marginal; they are generalizations rather than real people, but I like to think that they have a life of their own beyond the frame,” Maria Sulymenko explained.
Maria Sulymenko was born in 1981 in Kyiv, Ukraine, in the family of artists. She graduated from the T.H. Shevchenko State Comprehensive Art School (Kyiv) before moving to Germany for university studies. She studied sculpture and painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. After graduation, she studied graphic design at Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach am Main, where her professors included such acclaimed figures as ATAK (Georg Barber) and Eike König. Maria, who creates large-format paintings on paper and canvas, developed her artistic style in Germany. In 2016-2017, Voloshyn Gallery presented her works at SCOPE in Miami and in Basel (Switzerland). At present, Sulymenko lives and works in Irndorf, Germany.
In her installation from the series Filling (2018), Zhanna Kadyrova fills the vessels traditionally used for storing liquids with her signature material, tiles. The artist cuts up layers of colored tiles to the diameter of multiple enameled vessels. Seen from the side, the glistening tiles look like the shining surface of paint seemingly filling the vessels. The installation can be interpreted through the cultural and historical framework: from a certain perspective, the vessels filled with tiles seem flat and evocative of Suprematist experiments of the early 20th century Russian avant-garde.
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 5th Moscow Biennale, 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). The artist lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Voloshyn Gallery is also presenting the textile work Viper by Anastasiia Podervianska, a part of her Country Horror series (2016). Country Horror is based on Ukrainian Folk in Its Legends, Religious Views and Beliefs (1909), the monograph of a Ukrainian ethnographer Heorhii Bulashov. Each canvas, uniting traditional folk motifs with contemporary decor, is a retelling of one of the legends. The legends themselves are reminiscent of apocryphal texts in their unique combination of Biblical motifs with striking national elements, and Podervianska’s compositions evoke a similar tone. The artist has invented a unique visual language to better recreate the incongruities of sacred texts interpreted in a vibrant, emotionally charged folk language. By integrating images from contemporary popular culture into the fabric of her textile narratives, the artist invents her own version of contemporary Ukrainian folklore as textile comics. Podervianska adopts a multitude of weaving techniques: her canvases incorporate handmade lacework, beadwork, and applications.
Anastasiia Podervianska was born in 1978 in Kyiv, Ukraine, in the family of artists. She graduated from the T.H. Shevchenko State Comprehensive Art School in 1996, and from the Department of Monumental Art of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (advisor: Academy of Arts member Mykola Storozhenko) in 2002. A member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine since 2002, she was admitted to the union right after graduation. With her first exhibition going back to 1992, Podervianska has participated in many solo and group projects. Podervianska’s works can be found in the Eurolab Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Ukraine, as well as in private collections in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Macedonia, and the USA. The artist actively participates in shows and residencies. Her works were exhibited at many internation art fairs, including Scope Miami Beach 2017 (the US) and VOLTA 14 (Basel, Switzerland). She lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.
In her series of watercolors After the End (2015), Lesia Khomenko highlights the impossibility of unmediated perception, including and especially during wartime. By placing her sketches of quotidian life under opaque glass, the artist creates the blurred effect and establishes a paradoxical situation where the outlines of the figures she depicts are best seen from a distance, at a remove from the works. The artist finds a way to discuss the realities of our time, the realities of war, without seeking to represent them directly. On the other hand, Khomenko creates a striking metaphor of the psychological state of a victim or witness of war: under extreme circumstances, one yearns for quiet or even boredom, dreaming of a return to the monotonous quotidian. This contradictory unacknowledged desire which cannot come true is visualized by placing sketches depicting the artist’s day-to-day life under the almost fully opaque glass.
Lesia Khomenko was born in 1980 in Kyiv, where she lives and works to this day. 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. She 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 in 2008. A member of the curatorial union Khudrada since 2008. Her works could be seen at multiple solo and group shows, including the main project of Kyiv Biennale Arsenale in 2012, as well as at the National Art Museum of Ukraine, at the White Box Gallery (New York), in MUMOK (Vienna), and at Zachęta Gallery (Warsaw). Lesia Khomenko is a PinchukArtCentre Prize nominee (2009, 2011 and 2013) and the winner of the Future Generation Art Prize, established by Viktor Pinchuk too, as a member of R.E.P. group (2012). She was also the recipient of the Kazimir Malevich Prize in 2012 and 2016.
The oeuvre of Mikhailo Deyak will be represented by a work from the Space series. Space is a series of minimalist landscapes with austere compositions and sophisticated palette. Rather than trying to force his opinions or visions on the audience with these works, Deyak expects the viewers to enter into a dialogue with the works and with themselves. Space is a psychological project exploring our inner world. The most striking feature of the series is the fact that the artist painted it on glass. The choice of the medium is hardly random: Deyak grew up in the Transcarpathian Region, the land long known for its proliferation of unique techniques, including iconography on glass. Obviously, this informed the artist’s sensibility, encouraging such experiments.
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. 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 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.
Max 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.
MARX HALLE
KARL-FARKAS-GASSE 19
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
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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