olechko

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.

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.

(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 :).

had a solo show at Zeh gallery at the beginning of August. The concept something about heart, since every image carried some type of reference to the organ. Free tees with images from some paintings were the highlight of the show, although I am quite pissed off since I did not get any. Artist’s sister was a real sweetie and gave us recommendation where to get a drink after the show nearby. Here’s Antaloy himself on the top pic. The show attracted the cream of the crop crowd, I spotted there Lesya Khomenko and Ulyanov of proza.com.ua.

Zeh Gallery, 16 Illyinska st. , contant person - Margo

Olga Pyl’nyk, another wonderful lvivite, produces very lovely dreamy little sculptures that you can find all around the art galleries in Lviv. You can also find her at L’art Honchari gallery on Andriyivsky in Kyiv, for triple the price. I went for one to Khaos gallery (we like it the most among all the Lviv galleries). She is also well presented by the Green Sofa gallery there with more pictures of her art online.

Khaos gallery, 16 Ruska st., Lviv

Green sofa gallery 7 Virmenska st., Lviv

Students of Marsuchenko - the stellar veteran photographer who admires Tillmans - put together a show with a theme called Line of Conflict. The results are displayed at the RA gallery till August 3rd. RA gallery is the best photography gallery in Kyiv suffers financially big time these days. Its basement space costs them unbelievable twenty five thousand hrivnyas per month (in the Opera neighborhood). That’s hard to swallow for a non-profit. The gallery also offers evening painting classes and great advice on WhoisWho of the Kyiv art scene.

Yeah, I also took this course from Maruschenko, and must say me made me turn to painting! No, his teaching is amazing, it helps discover your stronger points, definitely recommend to anyone who’s got any ambitions in photography. I think he may be able to give lessons in English and definitely German languages (stone in your garden, dear Kyiv expats).

Photo by WhatsOn

Today I headed out to share with a few friends the better places to see art on Andriyivksy and in Podil. We’ve stopped by a few art sellers on the street,  five galleries  and took two coffies on our route.  These are the treasures we found:

Some very decent street art (the better works tended to be are sold by the artists themselves, they come out to the market only on weekends). Below are the pictures by  Shumakov V. with his cute little paintings of Pirogovo; Yuri Kachkin with small Kyiv landmark oils on pane; and tiny oforts by R. Sydorec.  All these were small works that did not cost more then $50 a piece - not bad.

The really good staff we found in Gallery 36 (36, Andriyivsky descent) - well-established and non-presumptious (12 years on the market), it sells mid-range (about $500 per piece) local artists. A few years back we bought from there a levkas by Igor Prokofyev - one of those baby-faced  fuzzy figures in late eighteen hundreds settings.

Then we popped into Hochari gallery where I recognized a little cute sculpture by Pylnyk - I am going back to Lviv to pick it up though - once again, I confirmed that the price markup on Lviv art market in Kyiv is 150%  for the same artists’ works!

The well-advertised White gallery current show did not impress us much. The other galleries Karas Atelier and art center by NaUKMA were closed so Zeh was the last spot on our itinerary. And what a treat it was.

Lovely Margo - gallerina at Zeh- let us dig into the back room fare - all the best current contemporary from Kyiv as well as brilliant upcoming stuff from the regions (the gallery specializes on out0of-towners). Now Yuri Pikul has a solo show there till August 2nd. He is only 23 and does very interesting post-photo realist oils of random landscapes and war-era shots.

Yuri Solomko  with his larger-then-life pictures of preserves is also represented there. He is the renowned artist from whom I’ve been lucky to take classes this spring, organized by and for IWCK.

Also we were really impressed with the paintings by Igor Pereklita, an unconventional Transcarpathian with his surreal poster-like paintings of beauties in typical Ukrainian landscapes.

The crawl made me make a list of tree good restaurants to visit on the Andriyivsky in the near future - Za Dvoma Zaycyamy (a guy in general’s uniform greets you at the entrance there, 34 Anrdiyivsky) Parmezan, 36 Andriyivsky) and Vernisazh(down the street from the first two). We ended up taking coffee at Kaffa (Scovorody st) - it has  great decor inside, ample seating outside and  some sumptuous coffee on their menu.

Three bottom pictures are courtesy of Zeh gallery website.

Let’s walk down Andriyvsky and to Podil to see what’s on show at private little galleries on the way. The locations I have in mind for us are:

Tryptyh with pretty landscapes
White Gallery with well advertised exhibit
Gallery 36
Atelier Karas with a fine collective
Kyiv Fine Art with some naked girls
Parsuna with Podil inspired dolls
Zeh with promising “March of Oats” show
Gallery at Kyiv-Mohyla academy

Contact me if you would like to join. I am thinking Saturday afternoon.

In the Ukrainian art scene I noticed a fun trend - at the commercial galleries there are lots of portraits with oversized heads  - the people look like grown-up babies.  We got one picture like that for a present two years back from the Gallery 36. These baby-people I pleasant to live with.  This one by Vladislav Shereshevsky is of the  Romanov family

I particularly like his society portraits, clearly modern faces in late eighteen hundreds setting., like these ladies in red on the bottom.  Altogether, here’s another trend - a fascination with the pre-revolution period - seen all throughout Andriyivsky descent on painting settings, restaurant interiors, etc. Well, it fits the period architecture as soon as you step out there outdoors.

All pictures are from the artists’ website.

Yesterday we popped into a few galleries to see what’s on.  The first on the way was Fine Art Kiev on 12 Velyka Zhytomyrska.  The exhibition by Ms. Kin’ called “My beautiful friends” was the lest artistic, looks like  average studio photographs, except for the pregnant girl - that one glows.

Next stop - Gallery 36 (36 Andriyivsky descent). That one holds a well-advertised exhibit called Unconscious by Oleksandr Milovzorov.  This paintings were just the associative splashes of color, he could have simply framed and hanged up his palettes on the walls. They demonstrate his great sence of color though.

Triptyсh Gallery down the street currently holds an exhibit by Oleksiy Appolonov.  I really liked two or three of his landscapes, very to-the-point massive brush strokes and perfect combination of color.  His art would be good to live with in your apartment. Tryptyh generally specializes in sellable art, for that reason they prefer not to let people snap pictures unlike in other exhibition spaces.  Therefore you can’t see very clearly on this pic anything but the gallery puts out the artwork online.  The rest of the exhibit looked like the artist did them all on the night before the opening.

Atelier Karas presented an interesting collective show Happy L’end by Oleksandr Matviyeno,  Marsel Onishko, Robert Saller, Andriy Stegura, Vadim Kharabaruk and Nataliya Shevchenko. I really loved these: