Volodymyr Budnikov | Inscription
Voloshyn Gallery is proud to present a solo show Inscription by Volodymyr Budnikov. The exhibition presents a cycle of paintings entitled Inscription by Budnikov.
“While working, I focused on conditions that make language possible, as well as the factors that imperil or hinder it. By mixing writing with painting, I brought painting back to its literal essence, the principle that breathes life into language and turns it into “live writing.” An inscription serves as a boundary between an image and a narrative, existing in both fields at once. This perspective makes visible how abstract paintings carry meanings”.
“Artist’s work is always exposed to language and has to engage with it. Obviously, it, too, is a language, exposed to itself. According to Beuys, in a way, what is written transforms into a drawing. In keeping with this accurate remark, I drew words, thus shaking their conventional meanings loose, so that inscriptions would be left to face their form time and time again. Something similar happens to the sound of a voice in song, when words become hard decipher not only because of specific pronunciation, but also because their quotidian meaning becomes irrelevant. In musical language, a phrase is turned inside out, pulling itself towards the light. In musical sounds, words are converted into meanings through divorcing them from their verbal shell and abstracting them from the plot they seem to be firmly enmeshed in”.
“It was important for me to focus on the very duration of writing, on the processuality of in-progress as growth or surfacing, when an inscription reveals itself in its fluidity. I focused on an inscription as an incomplete action to understand how a word feels when it’s being spoken. In essence, observing the development of my own work on the project, I charted a route between the two hidden points: the conception and the realization. What lies between the two points is known as the process of the artist’s work. Therefore, I began to follow the vulnerable progression of thought along the most dangerous stretch, where it’s left defenseless out in the open as it is formed. If the initial theme of the artist’s work is mysterious because of its abstract and unreal nature, the decision to complete it stems from the understanding that a work is plunging back into mystery”.
Volodymyr Budnikov, passages from the Inscription
Kaniv – Kyiv, August – September 2019
Volodymyr Budnikov was born in 1947 in Kyiv. In 1965 he graduated from the Republican Art School named after T. Shevchenko. During the years 1965-1971 he studied at the Kiev State Art Institute (Academician Tatyana Yablonskaya’s workshop). Since 1975 he has been a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. An Honored Art Worker of Ukraine, Professor of the National Academy of Arts. In 1998 he was awarded the title of "The Artist of the Year" and “the Golden Section" Prize at the III International Art Festival in Kyiv. Vladimir Budnikov’s works are presented in museums in Kyiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhya, Chernihiv, Berdyansk, Sumy, as well as in public and private collections in Austria, Germany, the USA, Japan, France, the Balkan countries. The painter lives and works in Kyiv.
