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Maryna Baranovska PAINTINGS
17 may —
30 June 2018

selected works

about

Voloshyn Gallery is proud to present a solo show of paintings by Maryna Baranovska, a young Berlin-based artist of Ukrainian origin. Baranovska is known for her expressive and surrealist style and monumental works. This is her first solo show in her homeland.

The artist describes the series presented at the show as follows:

“The exposition was conceived as a two-partite deal. The first part of the series was inspired by the image of the three witches from Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth. As you might remember, the play’s ominous first scene opens amidst thunder and lightning, with the three witches deciding where they should meet Macbeth. I wanted to depict a similar tumultuous tempest in nature. I see many things that remain relevant to this day in the classical tragedy: history is cyclical, and humankind is confronting the same challenges it faced 500 or 1,000 years ago, albeit in different forms. For me, the three witches presage the arrival of Anthropocene, man-made environmental changes ushered in by the industrial revolution and our actions in general. I depicted a post-apocalyptic landscape strongly evocative of Hell, teeming with mythological creatures.

Therefore, the first part is dramatic, painted in a warm palette, pastose and expressive. The central painting brims with mythological creatures, ostensibly swirling in a dance. Neither human nor animalistic, these creatures either grow out of or are tangled in the roots they are trying to break free of. Speaking of trees and roots, they often appear in my works. On the one hand, they symbolize a homecoming, and this show gave me an opportunity to revisit my own roots. On the other, they symbolize connections between the supernatural and the real, as well as the enduring principles of creation and birth of life.

The first part of the exposition is intended to be oppressive and elicit anxiety, but by passing through this grotesque world inhabited by mythological creatures, a viewer proceeds to the second room, the so-called Dream.

In contrast to the first part of the exposition, I have provisionally described the second part as Heaven. These paintings are markedly different, dreamlike, conveying spiritual equanimity and equilibrium, inner joy and grace. They were painted in a markedly different palette, cool and light; airy, they do not have the scope of their predecessors. The room also features a tree, either as an evocation of Edenic groves, or as the nymph Daphne of Greek mythology, frozen and turned into a tree.

The white-bearded man in contemporary hipster clothes is God, but God has no face. In this latter part, I wanted to demonstrate the possibility of spiritual beauty and the right to dream, no matter what circumstances.”

Maryna Baranovska usually foregoes sketches and preliminary drafts. According to the artist, painting dictates her plots, and her characters emerge from her subconscious, bridging the gap between the traditional, folkloric and mythological and the contemporary or even futurological. As a medium or shaman, she projects the collective unconscious universal to all humankind.

Maryna Baranovska was born in 1983 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Having graduated from the Department of Painting of the T.H. Shevchenko State Comprehensive Art School in 2001, she immigrated to Germany the same year. In 2002-2009, Baranovska studied at Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin), with professors Dieter Hacker and Valerie Favre as her advisors. Maryna is widely exhibited, and her works can often be seen at shows in Berlin and Paris. Maryna Baranovska lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Voloshyn Gallery

Kyiv, 13 Tereschenkivska Str., entrance through the arch, the 2nd yard

+38 067 467 00 07, +38 044 234 14 27  info@voloshyngallery.art, www.voloshyngallery.art

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