The Painting Department of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv undoubtedly offered solid preparation for becoming a painter. Yet, paradoxically, being an artist requires abandoning well-trodden paths. It demands disobedience, dissent, the questioning of the status quo, as well as sustained critical reflection. This tension defines the creative trajectory of Lesia Khomenko, a member of R.E.P., the most widely recognised Ukrainian artistic collective, known precisely for its transgressive approach, experimentation, and uncompromising search for its own language. Khomenko ultimately did not reject painting, often perceived as the most prestigious yet also the most traditional and therefore limiting medium. Instead, she sought a renewed and distinctly personal form for it, subjecting it to continual transformation: moving beyond the two-dimensional surface toward painterly installations, while simultaneously reflecting on the role of painting itself and on the methods that shape her artistic practice.
In the works presented at the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, the artist examines film and photographic footage of the full-scale war in Ukraine, including material from military operations widely circulated through news outlets and social media. She closely analyses the impact of war, or rather its traces, on human perception. The internet has made these images instantly accessible to a global audience while simultaneously dulling our sensitivity to them, rendering them unreal. Khomenko is interested in the role of the witness and in the function of technology in the production of historical records. She approaches these questions with intellectual distance, leaving the emotional response to the viewer. The direction of attention through the use of a bird’s-eye perspective, together with the futuristic compression of the content of a short video into a single frame containing “the entire moment of catastrophe,” allows the viewer to identify with the protagonist of the scene: the fighter, the drone, the fallen. Formal devices such as pixelation, which make the image abstract, refer to protective techniques used to conceal strategic objects, while at the same time conveying the condition of both viewers and the protagonists of these canvases – a fundamentally indeterminate state.
Exhibition dates: 13.03.2026 – 07.06.2026
Curator: Monika Szewczyk
Coordination: Yulia Kostereva
