Liste Artfair Basel 2026

Voloshyn Gallery is pleased to present Yuriy Bolsa's solo exhibition I Tripped Over a Cloud While Looking at the Ground - a meditation on perception, escape, and moral responsibility in a time of war.

 

The project stems from a simple consequence of a miserable urban life: looking up at the sky. What begins as a personal coping mechanism unfolds into an ethical question. Is looking upward an act of wonder, or a wilful evasion of the tragedy surrounding us? The artist does not resolve this tension, he inhabits it. In a time of war, the luxury of beauty carries a moral cost. Some look at the sky; others ascend to it, so that those below may exist without fear.

 

The paintings presented in the booth are dedicated to exploring what happens at the threshold between those two positions. Light, once absorbed through prolonged exposure to the sun or a strike of lightning, leaves a residue on the retina as an afterimage that temporarily obscures everything beneath it: the dirt, the cracks, the damage. This luminous blur becomes the central metaphor - blindness as a form of sight that reveals what has been endured.

 

The paintings represent Bolsa's reflections on the interaction with his surroundings and space, which he depicts through largely anthropomorphic silhouettes placed in various miseen-scènes. As is always the case in his work, the central symbolism of what unfolds on the canvas is conveyed through the titles themselves, such as What is needed is on the outside, what would frighten that need is hidden on the outside; Someone will remain inside, in order to exist on the outside later; I must take care of others, and you take care of me. In this way, the titles become more than a means of distinction - they actively shape the narrative and bring it to its fullest meaning.

 

The multi-part sculptural project Character explores the personal metamorphosis of its protagonist. The sculptures, crafted from plastic, metal, and chicken bones, combine three entirely different materials - each distinct in its nature - as three constituent elements of a single identity. Every character resembles the others, yet their forms and movements differ radically. Some are frozen in an attacking stance, weapon fused seamlessly with the body; others stand still in quiet anticipation, metallic objects growing from their torsos like armour. These figures simultaneously evoke mythical creatures and characters from a video game.

 

The wooden sculpture My Wound Is My Weapon presents a fragile yet simultaneously dangerous creature struggling to maintain its balance - a being caught between the acts of attacking and defending. Even in defeat, it cannot avoid wounding those who approach it. Every injury hardens it, making it more dangerous than before. The work incorporates glass that was blown out of the windows during a missile strike in the building where the artist's studio is located, demonstrating how any destruction becomes reinvented as a means of defence and attack at the same time.

Press release