Summer Show Voloshyn Gallery

In the course of the series of traditional summer exhibitions of young Ukrainian artists Summer Show Voloshyn Gallery presents the curator project of Lesia Khomenko «Cross Sea». The exhibition participants are Luka Basov, Bohdan Bunchak, Kateryna Lysovenko, Krystyna Melnyk, Bogdan Moroz, and Zhenia Stepanenko.

«Generated by a weather system, the waves clash with the waves, stemming from a different system, cover a thousand miles’ distance, and finally clash at different angles, creating a grid. The image of the waves emerged, when I was sitting oceanfront and thought about the relationship between the works of the future exhibition. There are six young authors taking part in the “Cross Sea”, they are the graduates of Contemporary Art course at Kyiv Academy of Media Arts. Like ocean waves, the approaches in their works clash, creating the complex design of oppositions. However, they also complement one another, balancing between objection and affirmation.

In my curator’s work I use multiple paradox method, with which I experiment a lot with the students at our practical laboratories at КАМА. Also I’m interested in an array of issues, evolving around art studies and art practice, criticality and ritual.

Luka Basov and Krystyna Melnyk are the painters, who, as part of their studies at the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture at the workshop of sacral painting, were working on deconstruction of the workshop programme: desacralizing and formalizing their works, they questioned the relevance of the existing system.

On the contrary, Bohdan Bunchak is working with visuality, which appeals to postconceptual tradition, albeit stays engrained in the orthodox canon. He, as a Christian, works in contemporary art, and combines critical approach with theological dogmatics.

Bogdan Moroz pleads to religious context in his works as well: the singing in his performances is borrowed from the Protestant mass.

The work of Kateryna Lysovenko turns the “waves’” direction to the deconstruction of academic system, takes a new sweep from the sacral to youth subcultures. The authors are working with the archaic: the Old and New Covenant, the Medieval, the Baroque, and the National.

The sculptures of Zhenia Stepanenko, the artist and member of the musical band “Poisonous Dog Saliva”, define the relationship between the works from the extra-academic, performative, and subculture positions».