olechko

Nov. 13, 7:30 pm

PinchukArtCentre presents the lecture of the Japanese art critic and curator Akiko Miki, who will talk about the last ten years’ development in Japanese contemporary art and the impact of Takashi Murakami’s works on the new generation of artists. Selected videos by Takashi Murakami and young Japanese artists will be represented during the presentation – including a.o Koki Tanaka, Zon Ito and Ryoko Aoki, Hiraki Sawa, Meiwa Denki and Aya Tanako.

From PinchukArtCentre Webstite

Illia Chichkan and Roda Design Lab opens a show called “Kitchen, as Art” on Thursday 15th, 7 pm, at the Arsenal (28, Sichnevogo Povstannya).

Had a great time at the book fair in Kyiv last weekend. Highly reccomend everyone going there again on 19 December (at the Ukrainian House). The publishers of note are Vydavnyctvo Starogo Leva, Granit, for the little ones who can not read yet- take Cachalot.  My frined Yuila brought us this one and it was so nice, I could not resist getting a few more. It’s a perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon indoors; they offer a playground for the little ones.

The Ukrainian House - 1, Khreschatyk, Evropeiska ploshcha

I had the pleasure of surveying the five floors of the Ukrainski Dim today with the Art-Kyiv fair in it’s last day.

Out of advertised “five floors” I really just found two of notice. On the first floor there was some classic Ukrainian paintings from 50’s and 60’s, including Petrynenko…

My favoarite Kyiv RA gallery showed off its style by exhibiting just one artist in its main booth. The artsits’s style was a mix of drawing and painting - very moody and interesting.

The best Lviv establishment - the Green Sofa gallery has represented several artists, Olga Pylnyk among them sold particuarly well. She has had a smashing exhibit at the Green Sofa in Lviv and now came to charm the kievites.

A quirky Parsuna gallery, that puts out only puppets, showed its best at the fair. I genrally find puppets very eerie but these are so fanstatic; things like this were represented in the fair:

The White gallery, a new place on Andriyivsky Uzviz 34B (entrance though the archway), has showed Vladislav Shereshevsky, and that was great! I noted his stuff on this blogt before, now his humburger thing below is even more exiting.

One Ukrainian peculiarity fo this fair is that it was treated like a bazaar - a buyer chose a piece, paid for it, picked it up and walked with it home - no red dots (expecept for one well-respected gallery) by the sold items on the walls, that stay there till the end of the exhibit. So the show was updated every day with new pieces to substitute the sold ones.

My favorite of the show was Oxana Mas - a special project she uses her “secret” tecnique that make her canvas glossy and dashing looking - very prolific artist she is.

There were suprisigly many paintings of Venice landscapes -a bit cheesy to my taste, expect for many the atrists that did them (about four or five - each per floor, I swear) had expressed a secret disite to represent Ukraine in Venice biennale (there are better ways to express that desire).

And finally, I was surprised to see the big players Zeh, Kyiv fine art and Bereznitsky gallery not respresented there.

We just got a word from Andriy (in sunshades on the pic) that our favoarite Ukrainian band has won the 2007 Battle of the Bands qualifiers in Ukraine to go to London for the final show on Dec. 4-6. We are very happy for the guys and expect this to turn into a sweet record deal!

Two rival towns going back in sixteen hundreds now are ruins with a palace/castle and a cathedral each. One castle now is a psychiatric hospital, the other - a ruin, home to junkies and stray sheep.

Here are some detailed photo-accounts of the trip by two Ukrainian travel bloggers to Olyka (here too) and to Klevan (and here). And here’s my photo memories of a very wodnerful atmonstperic trip:

The rest of the phots are in this flick set.

Last night I really enjoyed a perfomance by Dakha Brakha - an ento chaos band that usually accompanies perfomances at Dakh - the Centre for Contemporary Art. The guys got great reviews in the British media for their Barbican premiere of Macbeth last year.

One can really get into it only by experiencing their music first-hand - get the energy from the lovely folk tunes and energetic beat. Check out the pictures from the show here (first few shots in the set).

Highly reccomend checking out the Dakh shows (the bill is updated regularly on their site in English) . Mind half of their shows are text free, so you don’t have to understand Ukrainian or Russian to go there.

Kiev, Bolshaya Vasilkovskaya str., 136 (Libidskaya metro)

this is what I’ve painted recently:

Hutzul. oil on canvas board 13 x 18 sm I pained him from an old picture (1960) re that I found browsing the Ukraine and Ukrainians picture album by Honchar. The old man’s name is Klym Olemyan Kozymovych from Vyzhenka village. I love his wide belt and book-and-pipe accessories. Can’t wait to go down there these holidays to see the local types first-hand.

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Synevir lake in the Carpathians Charcoal on paper. In expectation of New Year’s in the Carpathians that we planned, I am picking up and drawing every single image from the place. This was a photo from 1914 I think.

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Two girlfreinds oil on canvas board 18 x 24 sm

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Papa 1974 oil on canvas. 30x 50 At 21, he wore bellbottoms and nylon shirts and had big hair. Mom decided you turned out terribly handsome in this one.

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Wedding 1958 oil on canvas. 30x 40 sm In Soviet people were not encouraged to smile into the camera. So my rents here look pretty terrified.

Current must-see exhibit in Kyiv is second annual Art-Kyiv 2007. 52 galleries exhibit on five floors of the Ukrainian House on European square (2, Khreshchatyk) opening today, runs till 10 November. I hear you can purchase a Marc Chagall there as well as artwork from 500 other Ukrainian artists, old and contemporary.

Mystetskyi Arsenal gallery (28 Sichnevogo Povstannya) opens a show tonight by Volodymyr Kozhuhar named “Lis”. Come buy there at 7 pm