olha pryymak

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.

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

Really enjoyed drawing with charcoal again:

Charcoal on paper. Nabil dreaming. In this drawing he has a bit crooked nose, also in real life his nose is very straight and beautiful. I just did not know how to erase things with charcoal yet when I did this drawing and kind of don’t want to change it now anymore.

1900′s – a lady in front of a Kyiv church. I made this drawing from one of the first pictures of Kyiv on display at the Musem of One Street on Andriyivsky descent. Love the moody winter setting and the lady’s dress in this one.

Besides the current Pinchuk exhibit a few other spaces put out interesting shows to see:

1. Mystetskyi Arsenal – 28 Sichnevogo Povstannya st., – Zhanna Kadyrova and Alisa Nikitova, murals and paintings about construction workers.

Image from Liliya Tymoshenko at the Arsenal

2. KyivFotoCom that I wrote about a few days back is still going on. Here’s the schedule:

Jorge Saenz/ Argentina (Broken Ranks) 12.09-24.10.07 at Soviart: 22а Andriyivsky desent; master-class by Glyadelov on 13.10.07 12:00

Elaine Ling/ Canada (Cuba chronicles) 13-24.10.07 FOundation for Promotion of Arts Development, 1/6 Frolivska, master-class on 14.10.07 14:00

Segei Mikhalchuk/Ukraine «!Hasta Siempre, Cuba!» 14.10.-28.10.07
RA Gallery: 32 B Khmelnytskogo, master-class: 15.10.07 19:00

3. People say something whorthwhile is going on at the Triptych gallery but I can’t get the info pulled up from their website – it’s down.

4. Aleksei Malykh has his exhibit opening at the White Gallery 34B Andriyivsky descent on 26 October at 7 pm.

The fabulously wealthy Pinchuk puts his money to a good cause bringing to us his pics from the last year’s top shows in London. The show called Reflections runs at Pinchuk Art Center till mid December. Everyone heard of Damian Hirst’s diamond scull sold for $100 mln – the highest priced work by living artist, Murakami’s psychedelic designs that made it on the Louis Vuitton bags. I recognized a few large-scale Gurskis that were on show at the White Cube several months ago. One of Anthony Gormley’s life-sized abstract self-portraits that decorated the Southbank yesterday is enjoying itself at the Bentley shop window – next to the gallery. There is the notorious Sam Taylor Wood, Jeff Coons, Mark Queen, and Richard Phillips. The few Ukrainian greats exhibited next the this get lost in comparison.

We particularly dug the white dove in formaldehyde by Hirst and Gormley’s glass room filled with fog. Apparently both of the artists were at the opening.

photos from tabloid.

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.

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.

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