Transcarpathian Regional Art Museum named after Joseph Bokshay in cooperation with Voloshyn Gallery (Kyiv) present personal exhibition of the artist Mikhailo Deyak: Creation. It is the first solo-project of Mikhailo Deyak in Western Ukraine where he comes from. The curators of the exhibition are Max and Julia Voloshyn.  

 

The exhibition Creation is a kind of conclusion of the artist’s transformation stage.  Its exposition includes dynamic fine art works on the canvas, landscapes on glass from the series Space and also metal bas-relief and sculptures from the series  Genesis. These works can be observed as a representative sample of the artist’s achievements for the period over the last two years. In them it can be easily traced how expression – typical of Deyak in his oil paintings – revealed itself in his experiments with form and plane and transformed into new plastic styles.  

 

The art historian Galyna Sklyarenko states that “Painting on the materials” roots from the fine art experience of Mikhailo Deyak: "Landscapes on glass" that have small conventional figures, or objectless, spacious, like they dip the look into a deep pond or infinite clamor without horizons, edges and corners. Combining traditional beauty with aesthetic features of the material where the color seems permanently moving from the outside - directly "on the glass" until covered with a thin, transparent layer. However, it is one that lends the painting a very different sound - distanced, cool - "behind the glass"… In colored metal works to the general solution and the texture of the surface is added, not associated with traditional painting, but with design and production. Curved colored planes with the play of light and shadow, mobility and arbitrary spontaneity of the rhythm attract to the association of the idea of minimalism whose "objectivity" and perfect "production" aesthetics by efforts of the artist turns into something else, that is subject to external forces, fragile, fickle ..."  

Deyak more and more often turns to different experiments with materials, looking for the new forms to incarnate his ideas: from rare and grandevil technique of painting on glass – it’s been common in transcarpathian icon-painting since ancient times – in series Space to tangles of cold “wrinkles” and mirror surfaces of metal. They resemble the imprint of our modern times, fast-paced and technological, in grand sculpture Dancer from series Genesis about which Galyna Sklyarenko says: “But it seems it is too cramped for Mikhailo Deyak to work only on the plane.  In 2016, he began a series of spatial objects "Genesis" - a metaphor of the origin of forms, movements, ideas and thoughts. They are the continuation of his favorite theme of bright color that fills almost organic forms of spatial composition where blue is associated with clouds and fragments of sky, and white, brown, yellow-hot - either with plants, or other, unknown forces, entities, life forms and so on. The theme of “natural” and “artificial” takes its continuation here.  Compositions of bent metal, soft and hard at the same time, colors as if they are losing their naturalness, either "paint" smooth surface, or as if they themselves become part of the "genesis" of new fictional forms. Captured by its creativity of advanced technology, by capabilities of the creation of its own, "different nature", the author of which somehow remains an artist.

Mikhailo Deyak is a prolific artist, it seems easy and fast, but in reality it is hard and intense. The world he creates, playing with colors, filled with the energy of colors and forms.  It's a world in motion, in constant, often incomprehensible changes, in combinations and oppositions, whose brightness attracts and confuses. His "Creation" is the path that can lead the way to the unexpected... “  

Mikhailo Deyak was born in 1984 in the village of Zolotaryovo in the Khust region in Transcarpathia, Ukraine. Between 1999 and 2003, he studied at Uzhhorod Arts College named after A. Erdeli under guidance of V. Mykyta, the People’s Artist of Ukraine. In 2003, Mikhailo entered the Kyiv National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, where he attended professor V. Zabashta’s workshops of landscape painting led by senior teacher I. Melnychuk. Since 2010 Mikhailo Deyak has been exclusively working with the Voloshyn gallery (Mystetska Zbirka).  Success and popularity of Mikhailo Deyak keep on growing. Over the last couple of years his works have been presented and sold at Philips Auction for four times. According to Art investment magazine, Mikhailo Deyak has become listed in the top-20 of young contemporary artists of the CIS, and ranks seventh in the list of the most prestigious artists of Ukraine, as Forbes puts it. The artist has considerable exhibition activities, for example, in 2016 his personal exhibition took place at art-show SCOPE Basel in Switzerland, where the works from two series, Genesis and Space, were demonstrated. Also, the artist participated in SCOPE Miami Beach and SCOPE New York from Voloshyn Gallery. In March, 2017 in New York was held personal exhibition of Mikhailo Deyak in Ukrainian Institute of America. Seven artist’s paintings were purchased by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and his works are also stored in the archives of the National Arts Museum of Ukraine. The artist’s works are a part of private collections in Ukraine, Canada, USA, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Hungary and China. Mikhailo Deyak lives and works in Kyiv.  

Transcarpathian Regional Art Museum named after Joseph Bokshay is one of bastions of culture and art of our land. It has been trough an uneasy way of foundation and development during more than half a century. Nowadays, the funds of the museum store over 10 thousand exhibits among which there are paintings, graphics, sculptures, pieces of applied and decorative art.