olechko

During our last visit to Lviv I came across Olena’s show at the Green Sofa gallery. It was mostly paintings of her cat, prosaic, you’ll say, but the way she does it… Looking back I kind of compare her freshness of subject matter with Sasha Makarska. She is much more mature though, well-respected by the art critics, established in the Lviv art scene and yet to be discovered by the Kyiv buyers. Therefore her monumental pieces go for around $1,000.

Checking with her earlier works I found an amazing series of Lviv backyard landscapes. The light in them grabs your attention the most. I put out here every picture I could get my hands on from those series:

More baby faces in the Kyiv art scene these days: this tongue-in-cheek show at the Zeh gallery resembles all too much Fernando Botero style, more so - the local Gapchinska. The author Nikifor Dobchynskyi purposefully using the style to emphasize the new Ukrainians’ lifestyle cliches.

I took all the pics from the zeh website.

While awaty on vacation, I doddled a few sights in my moleskine. The scanning is shotty, I did not figure out the picture clean up in my new Mac yet, it’s supposed to be easier, they say. xoxo

This year’s KievFotoCom - an international festival of photography - opened with a show by Milla Jung’s show about Brazil.  There were all the big photograhers at the opening on Friday.  One thing missing - any mention in the press where the rest of the festival will take place during the following month.  If I get lucky, will add the info here later.

Arsenal factory in Kyiv, just across the street from Lavra (in Pechersk) turned out to be the most impressive exhibition space I ever saw in Ukraine. Sadly enough I only discovered it on the last day of the Gogol-themed collective exhibit there before the space closed for renovation untill May. There were many interesting pieces on show: a Roitbood, particularly interesting watercolors by Dmytro Sytnikov and various unusual installation art. The acoustics in the space is fabulous and is probably amazing venue for live music perfomances.

There is an ongoing controversy since 2004 on who should fund and run this art space, more detailed info is on a wiki page about it.

The International Women’s Club of Kyiv art group starts the new year at a new location - the RA gallery, and with a new teacher - Tetyana Gershuni.  Check out Tenyana’s impressive bio on Kollecia gallery webpage.   Here are a few beautiful portraits by her that I found online.

The venue is equally impressive - Ra gallery (located near the Opera) is an established education center that offered best in the city adult learning cources in art and photofraphy for years.   Last year I had the pleasure of studying photography with Viktor Marushchenko there.

Even though this particular course is offered for IWCK members, drop ins by non-members are possible at 20 hrv. extra,  Each class will cost about 150 hrv. The price includes all the necessary supplies and an exhibit at the end of the year.   The first class meeting is tentatively scheduled for Friday 21st, at 11 am.

(Olexiy Appolonov) I wrote about him in my first gallery crawl post. At the time he had a personal exhibit at the Tryptyh gallery. This weekend we were going to a good friends’ wedding in Italy and we had to pick up a present in Kyiv at the last moment. Even though RA gallery usually carries higher-priced pieces, the owner Andriy Trilisky found for me in the back room this very lovely pastel by Apollonov. While carrying it on the plane I became so fond of it, it was hard to give it away to the dear newlyweds Fede and Michaela :).

The other night we took out our guest to a soccer game at the Olympic stadium where Italy played Ukraine in 2008 world cup qualifier. The Italians won 2 to 1 (scored by Schevchenko). The funnest part about the game was the crowd’s chanting, singing and funny drops in energy after intence moments of cheer. The downsides - a cloud of sigarette smoke that rose over the stadium and gave me the hangover feeling the next day. Another fun opportunity to check out this scene will be in a couple of months when the French team comes to play in Kyiv.