This is the first personal exhibition of Oleksandr Roytburd in Mystetska Zbirka art gallery. The project has been already presented this year in March in Odessa, and now the Kyiv audience will see it.
The first work from the series Roytburd has created in 2003. This was a self-portrait as a truncated head of John the Baptist. In eleven years during the “Maidan” New Year the artist creates one more troubled self-portrait: the index finger is pointing out from the breast and above his head there is an Iran's hat - it was the one Roytburd was wearing on the Maidan during the protests. Afterwards these anxious and prophetic paintings have become the first in the new cycle.
The crucial massive boost for creation of the series “Attention, painted!” took place during the Maidan events in the February, 2014. After coning back to Kyiv on 19th of February, Olexandr Roytburd faces trimming of Maidan and people’s mass fusillade. In his workroom with the shot sounds the artist created the painting named “Massacre in Chios”. Roytburd deeply experiences the peoples’ tragedy, embodying all the fear, grief and panic of Kyiv in his works. The next day, after he found out that Maidan has survived, the artist creates the painting “The one who raises the flag”. It personifies pain, fear and hope at the same time.
The series has been continued with typical for Roytburd allegorical philosophical works, where you can see subtle social irony. Most of his paintings Olexandr Roytburd has created in traditional dark earthy tones, deep ascetic color. Many works from the series “Attention, painted!” continue the already started in “Pompeii cycle” “corporeal discourse”. Roytburd talks to the audience with the help of human bodies. He uses human body elements, combining them as a constructor. Out of “anatomic modules” the artist creates new harmonic plastic combinations, accurate entire schemes, which work under the laws of “chain reaction” and “communicating vessels”. Bodies are cut and multiplied, glued and grown one through another. Due to such anatomic metamorphoses the artist demonstrates “matter torment”, powerful emotional impulse that is involuntarily transferred to the audience.
The cycle “Attention, painted!” is combined basing on program incompleteness: rich smooth painting and expressive drama contrast with untouched canvas and arbitrary borders. Such combination creates an illusion of sketchy ease and spontaneity, undercolorness and understatement.
The project name came up accidentally, when almost all the works have been created. In the middle of March, 2016, the poet Borys Khersonsky visited Olexandr Roytburd and accidentally touched the crude painting with his elbow. After miring his favorite sweater and being disappointed, Khersonsky offered to put some plates on the paintings “Attention, painted!”. This is how the poet helped to choose the name for the exhibition.
Olexandr Roytburd – famous Ukrainian artist, who is called a “Patriarch of Ukrainian postmodernism”. He was born in 1961 in Odessa. Since late 1980’s he actively develops the modern art in Odessa, Kyiv, Moscow, his exhibitions are held in Europe and the USA. In 1993 he became a co-founder of “New art” association. He has worked as a director of Marat Gelman gallery in Kyiv. Roytburd’s worls are located in Kyiv National art museum and Pinchuk Art Centre, Moscow Tretyakov gallery, Saint Petersburg Russian museum, New York Museum of Modern Art and in large museums of Odesa, Darem, Ljubljana and other collections. In 2009 his painting “Good bye, Caravaggio” was bought on the Phillips auction for the record for Ukrainian art market 97 500 US dollars. During the Revolution of Dignity the artist has become a leader of thoughts and an active social activist.
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