News Archive
21.05.2018 Solo exhibition ‘4.5.0.’ of Zinaida Lihacheva
 Solo exhibition ‘4.5.0’ of Zinaida Lihacheva will open at WHITE BOX, New York on June 1, 2018. ‘4.5.0’ stands for military communication coding and means “all quiet.” Ukrainian army initially started using this coding at the active combat in Eastern Ukraine against the Russian aggression. Eventually, army veterans adapted this coding to everyday language upon their return home. ‘4.5.0’ – “all is well.” Exhibition dates June 2 – July 5, 2018.
03.10.2014 MAIDAN. UKRAINE. ROAD TO FREEDOM. Multi- disciplinary arts exhibition.
 PRESS RELEASE >>>
New York >>>
MAIDAN. UKRAINE. ROAD TO FREEDOM
Art created by artists who participated in Ukraine’s uprising against a corrupt regime.
The exhibition ‘Maidan. Ukraine. Road to Freedom’ is the artistic expression of Ukrainian artists who participated in Ukraine’s uprising against a corrupt regime.
The Ukrainian ‘Maidan’ of 2013-2014 started on November 21, 2013 as a peaceful demonstration and turned into civil unrest on the central square of Kyiv called "Maidan Nezalezhnosti" (Independence Square). This peaceful demonstration was initiated by journalists, students, artists, musicians, bloggers and pro-democratic politicians after the government unexpectedly dropped the negotiations with the European Union on an association agreement and instead decided to join Russia’s customs union.
Artists were at the center of the demonstrations from very beginning creating protest posters, organizing mass performances and showing their works directly in the square. “Maidan. Ukraine. Road to Freedom” is a multi-disciplinary arts exhibition featuring paintings, photography, original artifacts, strike posters as well as art performance, music and film documentary created by the artists who were active participants of the Maidan events.
Matviy Vaisberg created a series of expressive abstract paintings entitled ‘The Wall’ that carries on the spirit of the events. The artist spent every day at demonstrations and painted at night in his studio being emotionally overwhelmed with the ongoing events. Photographs by Igor Gaidai, Oleksandr Glyadyelov, Maksym Dondyuk and Anton Trofymov comprise a series entitled "Maidan’s Saga" that is a highly dramatic, psychological, historic and social expression of the peaceful protests that turned into violence. Nothing can compare to the feeling of touching objects used by protesters to defend themselves against brutality of security forces that were part of the corrupt regime. These original artifacts will be presented at the exhibition; wooden and metal shields, cobblestones, burned down pieces of clothes, sticks, helmets, empty Molotov cocktail bottles, firewood logs and a pit fire barrel. Strike posters were an idea of the
Facebook community called "Strike-Plakat" consisting of eight professional designers and painters who created them and posted them online making it available for everyone to download and use. One poster from this series by Pavel Klubnikin entitled "I am a drop in the Ocean" was reproduced by the thousands and became the visual symbol of the peaceful protest. Oleh Denysenko created a commemorative coin dedicated to the Heavenly Hundred. It will be available for sale during the exhibition with all proceeds to go to help volunteers and refugees in Ukraine. Cinema of a civil protest "#BABYLON’13" provides a focused lens where the viewer can hear and see what took place inside the Maidan. Finally, the folk-rock band Mandry will perform ‘Music of Maidan.’ The lead musician of the band Foma spent countless days and nights at Maidan’s stage and on barricades: his music is directly inspired by the sound of the Ukrainian Revolution.
This exhibition was initially presented on June 5, 2014 at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin and later traveled to London where it was on exhibit at the Ukrainian Cultural Center on July 10-13, 2014. The exhibition will open at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York on October 20, 2014 and will continue through October 27, 2014. An opening reception featuring music and art performance will take place on October 23, 2014 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm. A panel discussion with Oleksandr Glyadyelov, Matviy Vaisberg and Serhiy Fomenko to take place on October 24 from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm.
Curator
Serhiy Fomenko ‘Foma.’
Facilitated by
Alexander Demko, Artfira Gallery
Participating artists
Matviy Vaisberg, Maxim Dondyuk, Anton Trofymov, Igor Gaidai, Olexander Glyadyelov, Oleksiy Sai, Mykola Honcharov, Oleh Denysenko.
Cinema of a civil protest #BABYLON’13. Music by folk-rock band ‘Mandry.’
This exhibition is supported by
DAR Foundation, Kyiv online at www.darfoundation.org.ua
Meest America, USA online at www.meest.us
03.06.2014 Maidan. Ukraine. The Way to Freedom
 On June 5, 2014 the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin will present an exhibition entitled “Maidan. Ukraine. The Way to Freedom.” A number of art projects will be shown during this event. As part of his art-performance, Kyiv based artist Matviy Vaisberg will paint the Berlin Wall to the “Sound of the Maidan” in the background. Cinema of the civil protest group ‘Babylon’13‘ will present a series of documentaries about recent events at the Independence Square in Kyiv. Photographers Ihor Haidai and Maxim Dondyuk will show a series of photographs entitled “Maidan Saga.” On exhibit will be a series of posters entitled ‘I am a drop in the ocean’ curated by Victor Sai. ‘GrozovSka Band’ and group ‘Mandry’ will have a concert at the opening of the exhibition, which is organized by Dukat Art Foundation with the support of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. For more information please email to
info@mauermuseum.de
18.04.2014 The Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York will present art album `Volodymyr Makarenko Paintings`
 The Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States of America invites you to an art book presentation
‘Volodymyr Makarenko Paintings.’
Volodymyr Makarenko is a well known Ukrainian artist who has been living and working in Paris since 1981. The artist is represented by the following galleries: «Galerie Saint-Leger» (France), «Turm-Galerie-Bonn» (Germany), «Galerie Noordeinde» (Netherlands), «Alla Rogers Gallery» and «Artfira Gallery» (USA), «KUMF Gallery» (Canada). In 1987 Makarenko received a silver medal from the city of Paris for his artistic achievements (Medaille d`Argent de la Ville de Paris pour la contribution au developpement de l`Art de France). Paris based art critic Jean-Claude Marcade in his review of Volodymyr Makarenko’s exhibition at Modern Art Gallery in Paris in 1991 called his artistic style “orphism” where light forms the composition and paintings float from non-objective to figurative.
The album will be presented by Alex Demko (publisher) and Jaroslaw Martyniuk ( art collector). The album “Volodymyr Makarenko Paintings” will be available for sale after the presentation. The Shevchenko Scientific Society is located at 63 Fourth Ave (between 9th and 10th Street) in Manhattan. For more information please go to www.shevchenko.org or call (212) 254-5130.
21.12.2013 Announcing our new book:
 “Volodymyr Makarenko Paintings” is a long awaited publication that studies 45 creative years of Volodymyr Makarenko, a Ukrainian modernist and non-conformist artist who has been living in Paris since 1981. Besides its artistic value illustrating over 150 paintings and drawings by Makarenko from 1962 up to the most recent works, this book offers a comprehensive study of an artist who stood against Soviet propaganda machine, who chose a freedom of artistic expression over a comfortable lifestyle of socialist realism painter in the former Soviet Union. Whether Makarenko lived in St. Petersburg, Tallinn, or Paris, he has always been a Ukrainian artist inspired by national style and ornaments, inspired by great Ukrainian history and traditions. This publication contains 200 pages, over 150 color illustrations, a number of photographs from personal archive of the artist and forewords by Prof. Daria Darewych, Vita Susak; text by Jean Claude Markade and interview with the artist by Alexander Demko. Illustrated works by Makarenko are from the artist’s collection as well as museum and private collections in the USA, Canada, Germany, France and Ukraine. Ukrainian texts edited by Vasyl Makhno. English text edited by Prof. Daria Darewych. This is a highly anticipated publication for all those who admire and collect works by Volodymyr Makarenko. In English, Ukrainian and Russian, 200 pages, hardcover.
>>>(Hardcover) Forewords by Prof. Daria Darewych (Toronto) and Vita Susak (Lviv). Texts by Jean-Claude Marcade (Paris) and Alexander Demko (New York).
>>>Alexander Demko and Anton Solomoukha (Art photographs), Artfira Gallery (Concept), Design by Lukyan Turetsky - 2D-Studio, Ukraine, Edition of 1,000.
>>>Special thanks to Daria and Jurij Darewych, Toronto, Volodymyr Kvashuk, Kyiv, Danylo Volynets and Oksana Markarova, USA and Prof. & Mrs. Basil A. Kalymon, Toronto. Publisher: Artfira Gallery, artfira.com. (December 2013) Language: Ukrainian, English and Russian. ISBN-13: 9780578120942. Product Dimensions: 285 x 215 x 18 mm / 11.25 x 8.5 x 0.75 inches. Shipping Weight: 1.1 kg / 2 lb. 9.20 oz. Available in the United States of America with artfira.com at $40 plus shipping. To buy the book please e-mail: mail@artfira.com or call 917-573-5688. You can also buy it on the Internet at www.amazon.com/shops/artfira
18.10.2013 ANTON SELF-PORTRAIT ANTON SELF-PORTRAIT ANTON
 This exhibition is a close study of self-portraits by three artists: Anton Solomoukha, Anton S. Kandinsky and Anton Trofymov. All three artists originally lived and studied in Kyiv, Ukraine and moved to Paris (Solomoukha) and New York (Kandinsky and Trofymov).
Each artist had to re-define himself in a new city where he lives now. Each artist created a new oeuvre that made him successful in the West. But most importantly, each artist had changed his own image, had come up with a new “self-portrait” that showcases and documents the story of his success.
Is such self-portrait a camouflage, a shell behind which the artist remains fragile and vulnerable? Is it the way to show off how adaptive he became? Or is it a self-defining marketing campaign that enhances the artist’s portfolio, making him a supermodel, a ‘face’ of his own art.
Without doubt a strong image of the artist will occupy our minds sometimes more than artwork created by him. It will become indivisible from his works. Moreover, only those artists who have redefined themselves via new image in a newly found home will become successful here.
The exhibition will open on October 17, 2013 and will continue through October 31.
For additional information please email: mail@artfira.com
18.10.2013 “Contemporary Ukrainian Artists” exhibition to open at Saatchi Gallery, London
 “Contemporary Ukrainian Artists” exhibition to open at Saatchi Gallery, London on October 17, 2013. The exhibition is organized as part of “Days of Ukraine in Great Britain” festival sponsored by the FIRTASH FOUNDATION and with the personal support of Lada Firtash. This is the first time when contemporary Ukrainain art will be shown in Great Britain on such a grand scale. The exhibition will take place at Saatchi Gallery from October 18 to October 25, 2013. Curated by Igor Abramovich, the owner of Art-Agent Ukr Gallery (online at art-agent.com.ua) it will show works by the following artsts: Nazar Bilyk, Igor Gusev, Zhanna Kadyrova, Pavlo Kerestey, Oleksandr Klymenko, Anatoliy Kryvolap, Pavlo Makov, Maxim Mamsikov, Mykola Matsenko, Roman Minin, Vinny Reunov, Oleksandr Roitburd, Stepan Ryabchenko, Arsen Savadov, Oleksiy Say, Tiberiy Silvashi, Marina Skugareva, Yuriy Solomko, Victor Sydorenko, Oleg Tistol, Vasyl Tsagolov, Matviy Vaysberg, Artem Volokitin, Oleksandr Zhyvotkov and Oleksiy Zolotariov. The exhibition will open on October 17 in conjunction with the opening of Frieze Art Fair in London. For more information and to view the catalog visit http://ukraine-days.co.uk
02.10.2013 Vasyl Krychevsky. Between Avant-Garde and Tradition
 National Art Museum of Ukraine presents exhibition “Vasyl Krychevsky. Between Avant-Garde and Tradition” which will open on October 4, 2013. The last exhibition of Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky in Ukraine took place in 1940 and presented 1050 work by this great master. It was the last exhibition with the artist still living at his homeland. World War II, departure from Ukraine and emigration caused an enormous damage to Krychevsky’s artistic heritage. Only about 300 works by Krychevsky can be traced today. The exhibition at the National Art Museum of Ukraine presents 70 works (oil paintings and drawings) most of which were not exhibited before. Among them recently found and restored painting “Night. Khan Palace of Bakhchisarai” from 1901. Krychevsky symbolizes development of the national art over more than 50 years period. Moreover, thanks to Krychevsky, Ukrainian art changed and evolved. The exhibition will continue through November 10, 2013. Museum address Hrushevsky Street 6, Kyiv. For more information visit http://namu.kiev.ua
31.05.2013 Hidden Gems: Art of the Transcarpathian School and Treasures of the Eastern Church
 Hidden Gems: Art of the Transcarpathian School and Treasures of the Eastern Church presents over forty 20th Century paintings of the Transcarpathian School, including Adalbert Erdelyi, Josif Boksaj, Fedor Manailo, who were in contact with the Post Impressionists in Paris and brought plein air painting back to their Carpathian homeland. It also features examples of the Eparchy’s collection of religious decorative arts, including fine iconography and liturgical accessories from Russia and Greece.
The force behind the Eparchy of Passaic’s collection was the late Bishop Michael Dudick, the second bishop of Passaic, and the paintings from the Transcarpathian School form the foundation for the Eparchy’s Heritage Library and Museum.
Exhibition will open on June 6, 2013 at 5:00pm. RSVP acceptances only. The exhibition will continue through July 28, 2013. Curators’ tour with Diane Rabiej and Maria Silvestri on Sunday, June 9 at 1:00pm. “The Bishop as Patron”, a lecture by Katherine Peters will take place on Sunday, June 30 at 1:00pm. Address: The Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic, 445 Lackawanna Avenue, Woodland Park, NJ 07424, online at www.eparchyofpassaic.com. For inquiries call 973-890-7777 or email to secretary@dioceseofpassaic.org
16.04.2013 Fine Art Auction of American, European, Asian and Russian Art
 Trinity International Auctions announces upcoming sale of American, European, Asian and Russian art that will take place on May 11 at 2 Arts Center Lane, Avon, CT, 06001. Works by a number of Russian and Ukrainian artists including Ivan Bilibin, Alexander Benois, Nicolai Fechin, Leon Bakst, Piotr Konchalovsky, Martiros Saryan, Zygmund Menkes, Mykola Glushchenko, Mykhailo Moroz among others will be available for sale. Auction preview opens on May 9. For more information please contact the auction at +1-860-677-9996 or info@tiauctions.com Internet bidding will be offered thru www.liveauctioneers.com and www.Artfact.com For more information please visit www.tiauctions.com
14.02.2013 Exhibition of Volodymyr Makarenko will open in Ukraine
 60 works by Volodymyr Makarenko from the collection of Doctor Michael Markowicz, Düren, Germany will be presented at the exhibition that will open at the Lviv National Art Gallery on February 15 and will continue through March 16, 1013. The exhibition will be presented by the museum’s director Larysa Reznikova, the head of the Artists’ Union of Ukraine Oleh Mykyta and the exhibition’s curators Natalia Mayik and Marta Moskaliuk. For not conforming to official art of Soviet propaganda Volodymyr Makarenko was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1981. The artist found his second home in France. He has been living and working in Paris for the last 32 years. This is the first exhibition of Volodymyr Makarenko in Ukraine. A fully illustrated catalogue published in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition by Dr. Markowicz will be presented on February 15. For more information please contact Ivanna Novakivsky at + 380-067-729-0186 or via email: Ivanna_novakivska@ukr.net. The Lviv National Art Gallery is located at Stefanyka Street 3, online at www.lvivgallery.org
03.02.2013 The opening of The Krychevsky Museum in Opishne, Ukraine
 >>>The opening of The Krychevsky Museum in Opishne, Poltava region, Ukraine, January 10, 2013>>>
Every country with rich cultural traditions has its one artist museum that serves as a magnet for art lovers. In Spain it is Museum of the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, in Hungary - Vasarely Museum in Budapest, in France - Musée Picasso in Paris, and in Russia - The Plastov Museum in Ulyanovsk.
As of January 10, 2013 Ukraine officially announced the opening of the Krychevsky Museum dedicated to the artistic dynasty of Krychevsky. The museum will present artworks as well as photographs, films and memorabilia of four generations of Krychevsky. Starting from Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky (1872/3-1952) and Fedir Hryhorovych Krychevsky (1879-1947), continuing with the second generation of Mykola Vasylovych Krychevsky (1898-1961), Vasyl Vasylovych Krychevsky (1901-1978) and Halyna Vasylivna Krychevsky (1918-2006), and continuing with Kateryna Rosandich-Krychevsky (b.1926), Vasyl Linde-Krychevsky (b.1953) and Oksana Linde-Ochoa-Krychevsky (b.1948) and showcasing the youngest generation - Vasyl Linde-Krychevsky Junior (b.1985) and Blanca Linde-Krychevsky (b.1976).
The opening of the Krychevsky Museum coincided with the 140 years after Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky’s birth. The artist himself designed the museum’s building. He lived in Opishne during 1902-1919. A documentary screening entitled “The Third Dimension of Vasyl Krychevsky” took place at the official opening of the museum. The film was made possible thanks to the support of DAAR Foundation online at www.darfoundation.org.ua
>>>To view the film on youtube click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPB8brkVTfw>>>
Planning your trip to Ukraine, don’t miss an opportunity to stopover at the beautiful historic village of Opishne where you can visit The Krychevsky Museum and the National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery at the following address:
The Krychevsky Museum
Krychevsky-Lebishchak Building
Partyzanska Street 102
Opishne, Poltava region 38164
>>>For more information please call:
Tel. + 380-535-342416
or e-mail: opishne_museum@poltava.ukrtel.net
11.10.2012 Auction house ‘Zolotoe Sechenie’ to hold the biggest sale in Ukraine
 Kyiv based Auction House ‘Zolotoe Sechenie’ (Golden Section) announced a preview of its upcoming sales in three categories: ‘Classic. Contemporary Art. Design.’ Auction preview Nov. 3 - 9, 2012 at “M17” Contemporary Art Center in Kyiv, online at www.m17.com.ua. Auction will take place on November 10.
Classic segment featuring Ukrainian, Russian and European works of the 19th and 20th Centuries will offer more than 100 lots. Top lots are paintings by S.Svetoslavski “Ukrainian Night”; P.Nilus “Evening in the Park”; V.Zaritsky “Evgenia” with an estiamte of $80,000-$120,000.
Contemporary Art sale will feature works by 50 artists including important paintings by Oleh Holisiy, Dmitriy Kavsan, Alexander Gnilitsky, Anatoliy Kryvolap, Marko Heiko, Alexander Zhivotkov, Alexander Roitburd, Alexander Sukcholit, Ilya Isupov, Anton Solomoukha, Anton Skorubsky Kandinsky among others. Works of a young generation of Ukrainian contemporary artists such as Artem Volokitin, Andrea Galashina and Beata Korn will be offered as well.
Design collection will feature 30 lots with a top lot of Porsche 356 Speedster, 1958. This sale category will offer objects by a number of Ukrainian designers, including woodwork by Yuri Ryntovt, objects by Valeriy and Kateryna Kuznetsov and kinetik installation of Kharkiv based artist Andrei Kchvorostianov.
With questions please contact pr@gs-art.com or call +380-93-557-6994. Preview auction online at www.gs-art.com
01.10.2012 UNIT24 Gallery, London launches 24DESIGN
Fancy fashion / fancy interiors / fancy toys / fancy gifts
 >>> UNIT24 Gallery launches 24DESIGN >>>
Fancy fashion / fancy interiors / fancy toys / fancy gifts
>>> Curated by Kasia Morawska >>>
Private view, 6th October 2012, 6:30pm to 9pm.
UNIT24 Gallery, 20 Great Guildford St, London SE1 0FD.
Nearest underground: Southwark & London Bridge.
www.unit24.info
>>> 24DESIGN by Unit24 gallery brings together a group of exceptional international artists & designers to create a series of limited edition works exclusively for the gallery.
24 Design is a new international platform for 24 artists and designers from around the world, working across mediums to create innovative, limited edition, design objects. Each artist has drawn upon their oeuvre and the exhibition’s themes to produce works that are beautiful, challenging and innovative. These works highlight a range of design concepts that are both aesthetically engaging and functional while all the time blurring the line between fine art and high-end commercial design.
Featuring works by: Christina Mitrentse, Eric Parnes, Olaf Wendt, Tiziana Lardieri, Anton S. Kandinsky, Kevin Wayne, Clayton Campbell, Izabela Lapinska, James Olley, Arlette Ess, Zara Arsenyan, Ewa Batko, Olga Kiwerski, Jonas Ranson, Marek Borysiewicz, Tomasz Koniczek, Ivayla Zivkowa, Takayouki Hara.
Over the coming months 24Design explores 4 distinct themes - Fancy Fashion, Fancy Interiors, Fancy Toys and Fancy Gifts.
24 Design limited editions are now available at Unit24’s London gallery and soon also from our website. www.unit24.info/24design For more information email to info@24design.co or call tel: +44 (0)785 147 2598
19.08.2012 TYZHDEN / Week of Contemporary Art in Lviv
 From August 31 through September 8, 2012 the city of Lviv in Ukraine will be hosting Lviv Biennale – Week of Contemporary Art. Organized by Dzyga Art Association this is the fourth ‘TYZHDEN’ (‘Tyzhden’ in Ukrainian means week) of contemporary art to be presented in the following categories: Installations, Objects, Multimedia, Performance, Exhibitions, Lectures, Panel discussions and debates, and Master classes. Title of the first Lviv Biennale is Uncertainty.
Lviv Biennale ‘Tyzhden’ branded as “Venice Biennale of East and Central Europe” is a unique opportunity to experience contemporary art in this historic city founded in the 12th Century. Artworks will be featured in a number of venues within the Historic Centre, area part of the UNESCO World Heritage Programme. For example 16th century Gunpowder Warehouse (In Ukrainian ‘Porokhova Vezha’) will be open to art installations.
Lviv Biennale ‘Tyzhden’ will present a number of curatorial projects involving artsts and curators from Ukraine, Poland, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, France, Great Britain, Venezuela, Canada and the USA. Envisioned by a group of young art enthusiasts, Lviv Biennale ‘Tyzhden’ aims to build acceptance of contemporary art by the greater audience, which is still attached to totalitarian art standards established by the former Soviet Union.
Title of the first Lviv Biennale ‘Tyzhden’ 2012 – Uncertainty.
Curators:
Janusz Baldyga (Poland),
Tamar Raban (Israel),
Volodymyr Kaufman (Ukraine).
Supported by:
Development of Ukraine Rinat Akhmetov Foundation online at http://www.i3grants.org/en.
Organizers:
Institute of Contemporary Art,
Dzyga Art Association,
Polish Institute in Kyiv,
Museum of Ideas,
NGO ‘Virmenska 35’,
Lviv City Council,
Center for Urban History of East Central Europe.
Partners:
Lviv Palace of Arts,
Lviv Architects’ Union of Ukraine,
artfira.com.
Venues:
Dzyga Gallery, Viermenska Street 35,
Museum of Ideas, Valova Street 18,
Lviv Palace of Arts, Kopernika Street 17,
IconArt Gallery, Virmenska Street 26,
Photoclub 5x5, Koliivshchyny Square 2,
Porokhova Vezha, Pidvalna Street 4 – Historical 16th century gunpowder warehouse.
Partial list of participating artists:
Kzrysztof Bernarski,
Anton Solomoukha,
Tiberiy Silvashi,
Anatol Stepanenko,
Oleksa Furdiyak,
Daniil Galkin,
Serhiy Petlyuk,
Yaroslav Pershko,
Jacek Jagielski,
Bohdan Shmylovych,
Taras Kotlyar,
Oleh Perkovskyi,
Denys Struk,
Volodymyr Stetskovych,
Vasyl Linde Krychevsky Jr.,
Vladyslav Bunin.
Detailed information online at dzyga.com.
Please send all inquiries to: dzygainfo@gmail.com
06.07.2012 BB.CONTEMPORARY presents BINARY EXISTENCE
 BB. Contemporary presents BINARY EXISTENCE, a contemporary art exhibition curated by Natasha Ulyanov and Lindsay Sullivan, on view at 506 East 74th Street, July 12th until July 18th, 2012. For BINARY EXISTENCE, Ulyanov and Sullivan have selected a diverse group of emerging artists for a thematic exhibition based on ideas of identity, specifically pondering the duality of reality versus perception. The Upper East Side exhibition features Jess Larson, Anton Kandinsky, Dulce Pinzon, Lee, GanU, Shantell Martin, Yasmine Chatila, and Jin-Seob Yun, all accomplished artists exploring how societal expectations of gender, status, and appearance, as well as historical and current cultural projections, shape public perception and self-identification.
Larson`s embroidered "flash cards" use imagery from old-fashioned household items paired with text to playfully examine the female role in the household and society. The subject matter and the craft draw from a bygone era where women`s roles were more concretely defined and examine from a contemporary perspective the complexity of the female identity.
Kandinsky’s portrait duos are tongue-in-cheek commentaries on the positioning of societal and political celebrities in relation to one another. Beneath their humor, Kandinsky’s paintings highlight a keen perception of the individual’s desire to be someone or something else.
Pinzon`s photographs create scenes of Mexican immigrants outfitted as superheroes as they carry out their daily jobs challenging perceptions of significance and status in society. The text included with each photograph includes the amount of money each worker sends home to family each month, suggesting support of family and community may itself be heroic.
Using hundreds of handcrafted Korean rubber stamps, Lee, GanU fashions an abstract landscape of characters and symbols that once served as signatures. Each unique stamp personifies the individual, but in the collective, the work resembles an undulating terrain, which symbolize the historic cultural influences on identity.
Martin`s stream-of-consciousness black and white drawings scroll along, creating with simple lines scenes of imaginary characters and landscapes that echo the artist`s motto, "Be More, Do Less." In this playful wonderland, Martin allows a freedom to self-reflect on the clutter and noise that obstruct us from existing to the fullest.
Jin-Seob Yun`s colorful sculptures examine the role of fashion and appearance as an outward manifestation of identity. Though poised as models on a catwalk, the figures also balance bulbous growths that represent the societal pressures and encumbrances of beauty and physical appearance.
Captured through a telescope, Chatila`s haunting photographs expose private moments of individuals through windows around New York City. Examining the subject caught unaware in breaths of repose and vulnerability, these photographs provide a mirror to ask "Who are you when no one is watching?"
Bringing together stylistically disparate artists rooted in thematic similarity, BINARY EXISTENCE poses no answers, but intends to invite discussion and self-analysis of the pressures, illusions, and preconceptions of identity.
For further information, please contact Lindsay Sullivan and Natasha Ulyanov at BB.Contemporary.Art@gmail.com or (310)-508-4346.
08.05.2012 The Figure in Modern Sculpture
 >>> SCULPTURE BY SIX MODERNISTS AT FORUM GALLERY, NEW YORK >>>
May 10 – June 23, 2012
New York – An exhibition of sculpture by Alexander Archipenko, Chaim Gross, Gaston Lachaise, Jacques Lipchitz, Elie Nadelman and John Storrs will be presented by Forum Gallery from May 10 to June 23, 2012. Curated by Kenneth Wayne, Ph.D., the exhibition, The Figure in Modern Sculpture, will include twenty-five works that represent the collective inspiration these artists found in the visual art, music, dance, architecture and machine-age industry of the early twentieth century.
In this exhibition, Dr. Wayne posits that, beginning with the second decade of the twentieth century, artists on both sides of the Atlantic broke with academic tradition to depict modern man in original ways, infusing their work with a sense of mystery, mirth and movement, creating a new and dynamic vision of the human figure.
The sculpture in the Forum Gallery exhibition begins chronologically with the swirling plaster figure, Kauernde, 1912, by Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964) and includes dancing, standing, kneeling, reclining and performing figures, ending with Chaim Gross’ (1904-1991) Circus Girl of 1957. The Archipenko works are advanced in their modernity, the Gross sculptures are animated forms that crystallize their period, and the curvilinear bronzes of Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935), cubist figures in stone by Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973), original pieces in five different media by Elie Nadelman (1882-1946), and streamlined interpretations by John Storrs (1885-1956) all collaborate to inform the new vision of their time.
Working independently when the Forum Gallery exhibition came into being, Dr. Kenneth Wayne has since been appointed Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. His past positions include being Curator of Modern Art at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and the Joan Whitney Payson Curator at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine.
The Figure in Modern Sculpture is presented by Forum Gallery with the cooperation of the estates or foundations of all six artists, and through the courtesy of private collectors.
The Figure in Modern Sculpture is accompanied by a 70-page, fully illustrated catalogue with essay by Dr. Wayne and photography by D. James Dee.
# # #
An opening reception will be held on Gallery Night on 57th Street, Thursday, May 10, 2012 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Forum Gallery is located at 730 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, New York. The entire exhibition may be viewed online at www.forumgallery.com/exhibitions/current-season/.
For more information, please contact:
Forum Gallery
Erica Berkowitz, 212-355-4545, erica@forumgallery.com
28.03.2012 Golden Section Auction House presents
 Golden Section Auction House presents exhibition entitled “Nikolai Hlushchenko’s works on paper from 1930s – 1970s” at the Kyiv National Museum of Russian Art.
The show will feature more than 30 works on paper from Hlushchenko’s travels in France, Spain, Germany and Italy as well as his illustrations to Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novel Fata-Morgana. A set of 35 works will emphasize Hlushchenko’s highest point of creativity from 1970s. For the first time the viewer will be able to see the last work by the painter, Bouquet of Flowers which he painted in his very last days. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with a foreword by Eduard Dymshyts. The exhibition to open on April 6 will continue through April 18. Kyiv National Museum of Russian art is located at Tereshchenko Street 9. For press inquiries please call Elena Butkevych at +38 044 254 44 38 or email pr@gs-art.com.
27.03.2012 Recently published book Abraham Manievich
 >>> Abraham Manievich >>> by Alan Pensler and Mimi Ginsberg. English version of the book has been published in cooperation with The Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in association with Hudson Hills Press, Manchester and New York. Russian version of the book to be distributed exclusively by artfira.com in Russia, Ukraine and the United States of America. This is a long awaited publication dedicated to paintings of Ukrainian-born artist Abraham Manievich. The book offers a systematic examination of the development and establishment of the artistic career of Abraham Manievich first in Europe and later in America. The book consists of the following chapters: Paris and the Early Years, Prelude to a Symphony, Civil War and Destruction of the Ghetto, The Symphony of Blood, Jewish Futurist Painting, America, The Bronx Painting, A Return to Europe, The Culmination of a Vision and Abraham Manievich in Context. The book is available in both softbound and hardbound covers; 184 pages, includes chronology and an index, over 100 color plates and 54 other reproductions that include photographs and documents from family archives. English edition is distributed by Hudson Hills Press. Russian edition is distributed by artfira.com. For more information please contact mail@artfira.com
29.12.2011 Re-Imagine Ourselves: A Festival of New Art, Music, Performance, Poetry and Video
 Re-Imagine: Ourselves A Festival of New Art, Music, Performance, Poetry and Video
presented by Yara Arts Group at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York
January 27-29, 2012
Yara Arts Group is a resident company at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York. Established in 1990, Yara is a collective of artists of Asian, African, Latino, Eastern and Western European ancestry, who come together to create original work based on contemporary and traditional material from often-overlooked Eastern cultures. The artists bring together fragments of plays, poems, songs, myths and historical sources to create original work that is reflective of the culture they explore. The group has created 24 original theatre pieces based on extensive research in Eastern Europe, Siberia and Asia in Yara`s signature style of: multilingual dialogue and songs supported by evocative visuals and documentation.
In addition to the theatrical performances, Yara curates an annual weekend-long winter festival of visual art, music and performances at the Ukrainian Institute in Manhattan. The Ukrainian Institute is a mansion that is protected as a contributing element of the Metropolitan Museum Historic District and in 1977 was designated as a National Historic Landmark. The festival will be installed on all three floors of the mansion. http://www.ukrainianinstitute.org/ In addition to visual art, including video, the weekend will include a concert, daily workshops, and scheduled performances.
CALL TO ARTISTS
This year`s theme is Re-Imagine: Ourselves. How do you re-imagine yourself as a person, as an artist, and/or the community?
GUIDELINES: Participate in the curated festival by submitting images and video of your own art addressing the theme, Re-Imagine: Ourselves. Artists will be contacted by January 9, 2012 only if they are chosen to participate. All videos must be submitted as a link on Youtube or Vimeo. All images must be submitted as jpegs, no larger than 1MB each. No work will be for sale during this festival. All work must be submitted to yara.arts.group@gmail.com by January 3, 2012.
**All work must be accompanied by a short statement of up to 2 paragraphs.
VIDEO: Submit video up to 1 minute in length by sending a link (Youtube or Vimeo)
VISUAL ARTISTS: Submit up to 5 (five) images of any 2-D media (photography, digital art, prints, drawings, paintings, etc)
PERFORMERS/POETS/MUSICIANS: Submit any text, sound samples or images. Proposals will also be considered. Performers can also participate by signing up for acting, singing, and music workshops starting now. Please include any ideas in your email.
for more information write to us at yara.arts.group@gmail.com.
08.11.2011 Borys Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv, 1915-1931
 New York City, October 31, 2011 — The first comprehensive exhibition of avant-garde artist
Borys Kosarev will be presented in New York City at The Ukrainian Museum opening
December 4 and on display through May 2, 2012. Borys Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv, 1915-
1931 includes 82 works on paper by Kosarev, an outsider of the Eastern European Modernist
movement and a survivor of Stalin’s intellectual purges in 1930s Ukraine.
Borys Kosarev (1897-1994), also known as Boris Kosariev, was a contemporary of prominent
Kharkiv, Ukraine artists David Burliuk (1882-1967), Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953), and Ilya
Repin (1844-1930), as well as other celebrated Ukrainian artists such as Kazimir Malevich
(1879-1935) and Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964). A master graphic artist, painter, designer,
photographer, and book illustrator, Kosarev worked with luminaries such as theater director Les
Kurbas (1887-1937), poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), and cinema pioneers Alexander
Dovzhenko (1894-1956) and Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948). One of Kosarev`s closest
collaborators in the Kharkiv avant-garde was Volodymyr Bobrytskyi, who emigrated to New
York and became a renowned designer, known as Bobri.
“Kosarev is barely known in his own country. This first ever exhibition brings to light Kosarev’s
prodigious talent and exposes the fundamental relationship between the artist and the site of his
creative stimulus, his beloved city, Kharkiv,” said Maria Shust, director of The Ukrainian
Museum. “The exhibition will return to Ukraine to be shown at the Kharkiv Museum in 2012.
Kosarev’s extensive contribution to Ukrainian Modernism will finally be given its due.”
Borys Kosarev’s name will forever be associated with the city of Kharkiv—the place of his birth,
death, and a long life devoted to the visual arts. A native son of the fiercely independent Kharkiv
territory, which produced some of Ukraine’s most creative cultural personalities, Kosarev
epitomizes the spirit of the area and its regional diversity. The contents of the exhibition coincide
with the period of Kharkiv’s status as Ukraine’s capital city (1919-1934) and the rise of
Constructivism as an ideological aesthetic. It was also the period of Ukrainianization—a
government policy that encouraged the revitalization of national culture, only to be quashed
through a series of orchestrated purges of its proponents, the Ukrainian intelligentsia, beginning
in the 1930s. While it flourished, Ukrainianization brought with it a renaissance of art and
culture, serving as an unprecedented gateway into global Modernism through the aesthetic of
Constructivism.
Sheltered from excessive official scrutiny by working in theater design and as a teacher until his
death in 1994, Kosarev survived the Stalin purges and later repressions by intentionally staying
“under the radar screen.” Sadly, his own reticence, coupled with the pressures exerted by the
political landscape of the times, left Kosarev virtually unknown as a contributor to the Modernist
movement. Not unlike Anatol Petrytsky (1895-1964), whose works were called a “serendipitous
discovery” by the New York Times (Glueck, Grace. “Ukrainian Modernists, All Alone, Here at
Last.” The New York Times, November 4, 2006, B7), Kosarev and his art are yet to be revealed
and considered among the important Modernists of the early 20th century.
Borys Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv, 1915-1931 is augmented with several works by his
colleagues Vasyl Yermilov (1894-1968) and Maria Syniakova (1890-1984). The exhibition,
comprising 88 objects in total, is curated by Myroslava M. Mudrak, Professor of Art History,
The Ohio State University.
Organized by The Ukrainian Museum (New York), the Kharkiv Art Museum (Ukraine), and
Rodovid Gallery (Ukraine), the objects in this exhibition are drawn from the collections of Nadia
Kosareva (Kharkiv), the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema Arts of Ukraine (Kyiv), the
Kharkiv Art Museum, Borys and Tetiana Grynyov (Kharkiv), the VovaTania Gallery (Kharkiv),
Dmytro Horbachov (Kyiv), and Oleksander Myzhin (Kharkiv). Borys Kosarev: Modernist
Kharkiv, 1915-1931 is accompanied by a catalogue authored by Professor Mudrak with
additional essays written by Tetiana Pavlova and Valentyna Chechyk, who co-authored the 2009
monograph Borys Kosarev 1920s: Vid Maliarstva do Tea-Kino-Photo (Borys Kosarev 1920s:
From Painting to Thea-Cine-Photo). The exhibition is funded in part by the Stedley Art
Foundation (Ukraine) and individual sponsors in the United States.
For more information please contact Hanya Krill via email:
hanya.krill@ukrainianmuseum.org or call the museum at 212-228-0110 or visit www.ukrainianmuseum.org
26.08.2011 China-ism II: Democracy or Economy? Anton S. Kandinsky & Ai Weiwei
 Press Release >>> China-ism II: Democracy or Economy?>>>
Curated by David Rong & Alex Demko
September 13, 2011 – October 9, 2011
China has galvanized a powerhouse economy, and its contemporary art is now in a state to deliver a Viagra effect to the contemporary art world at large. When Andy Warhol transformed Mao into a pop art icon through his larger than life portrait, Mao entered the international art scene and became a timeless symbol of what New York-based artist Anton S. Kandinsky calls “China-ism.”
“China-ism” is an artistic interpretation of contemporary China – its culture, politics and economy coined by Kandinsky, a non-Asian artist. It also serves as a way for the international art community to reflect on contemporary China via art. The first China-ism exhibition was curated by David Rong and Alex Demko in October of 2009.
While China’s economy has changed dramatically over the last twenty years, the state of democracy in the country has not changed at all. Merely an artist seeking and defending his freedom of speech, Ai Weiwei was detained on April 3, 2011 and was held in an unknown location by the Chinese government for 80 days. Just over a month into the artist’s arrest, Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim Museum, spoke at the opening of Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in New York City (an opening the artist was formerly scheduled to attend) stating that if there is no freedom of speech, there is no modern art and that the world is not challenging the Chinese government but that the Chinese government is in fact challenging the world.
The exhibition, China-ism II: Democracy or Economy?, asks the question: “If China is already changing the world, will the world change China?” The exhibition presents 13 oil paintings by Kandinsky as well as one original photograph, Guard, Seven Frames (1994) and video art I`m walking on the road to Dead Land (2010) by Ai Weiwei.
If Wassily Kandinsky’s works are representative of revolutionary change in the early twentieth century, Anton S. Kandinsky has upheld the tradition begun by his forefather. Well known for his “Gemism” paintings, begun in 2004, these works are composed of naturalistic images of gemstones intermingling with flags, ideograms, political figures and celebrities as well as historical and social iconography from China, the former Soviet Union as well as American pop culture.
White Box, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, provides a unique site for curators and artists alike to present exhibitions and explore non-commercial, innovative ideas via projects that range from aesthetically exciting to provocative.
VIP reception/press conference September 15, 2011
Opening reception September 22, 2011
Panel discussion, "Democracy or Economy? China-ism in the Contemporary World" with academics, economists, and artists September 29, 2011
To view images of works see http://antonkandinsky.com/art-projects_china_ism_II.html
Press can contact press@whiteboxny.org
03.07.2011 Cai Guo-Qiang to exhibit at IZOLYATSIA, Donetsk, Ukraine
 *Cai Guo-Qiang – 1040M Underground* opens on Saturday, 27 August through
Sunday, 13 November 2011 at *IZOLYATSIA. Platform For Cultural
Initiatives*in Donetsk. This marks Cai Guo-Qiang’s first solo
exhibition in Ukraine and
will feature two new site-specific installations by the artist, including a
new series of gunpowder drawings produced on the *IZOLYATSIA* campus. The
artist will work closely with local painters, miners and volunteers to
create the gunpowder drawings on paper. The production process will be open
and free to the public, and audience members will be able to witness an
artist at work as well as experience first hand the ignition of the
gunpowder drawings.
The exhibition chronicles Cai’s dialogue with the local community and their
history and culture. His work seeks to express the fate of people,
specifically the once-glorified laborers of the lower class in a rapidly
changing time. The exhibition also reveals new possibilities through
contemporary art: by transforming waste into treasure, we inherit and
practice the “Socialist ideal” of art for the people and art embedded in
life.
*Cai Guo-Qiang – 1040M Underground *stems from the artist’s experience in
May to the coal and salt mines of the industrial Donbas region. During his
visit, Cai descended 1040 meters below ground level and trekked more than
1000 meters in the tunnel, mirroring the same route the coal miners take
every day. After his “journey to the center of the earth,” a hike to the top
of the *IZOLYATSIA* *terrekon* – as “slag heaps” are known colloquially –
unveiled a breathtaking view of the city: white smoke from factory chimneys,
a bright orange waterfall of molten steel glistening in the sunset, and
statues of coal mining heroes that stand tall all over the city.
The first element of the exhibition, *Monuments on Shoulders*, is a
gunpowder drawing installation housed in the main gallery. The entire
gunpowder drawing making process will take place in front of a live
audience. Cai will first lead nine local Socialist Realist painters to
sketch 27 mine workers’ portraits in the lobbies of the salt and coal mines.
Volunteers will then help carve the images into stencils and Cai will spread
different grades and grains of gunpowder onto the canvases according to
different effects he wishes to achieve. All 27 portraits will be ignited.
The finished gunpowder drawings will be mounted on frames identical to the
ones used to hold the portraits of Soviet leaders in propaganda parades,
spreading across a mound of coal to the left and a slope of salt to the
right in the gallery. The drawings will be lit with mining lamps, hanging
from the ceiling like stars.
*Nursery Rhymes*, the second component of the exhibition, will be situated
in the remnants of a factory building (Shop 2) destroyed by a fire. When
visitors enter the space, they will be instantly drawn to the soot-covered
interior of the building. Under dim lighting, nine used mining carts line up
as if meandering down the track in the tunnel, rocking slowly like cradles.
Each “cradle” contains a projection on the canopy: Ukrainian folk songs,
Soviet era athletes and other role models, communist propaganda films,
documentaries on the glorified lives of miners, and Socialist period art
films. Along the sides of the canopy will hang salvaged objects from the
days of the factory, such as old musical instruments from the factory club,
tiny chess boards from the factory kindergarten, and old workers’ uniforms
and tools, all rocking along like a child’s mobile.
For more information please visit http://www.izolyatsia.org For press inquiries contact *Tetyana Filevska*, project coordinator
tetyana.filevska@izolyatsia.org or by phone +38 067 503 23 69
13.06.2011 Triptych Art Gallery
 Two well-known Kyiv based galleries Triptych and Dukat have merged to form Triptych Art Gallery. The newly formed gallery will open with an inaugural exhibition of paintings by Anatoly Kryvolap at its new exhibition space centrally located at 14 Desyatinna Street in Kyiv.
Triptych Gallery was founded in Kyiv in the 1980s with a focus on contemporary Ukrainian art. Dukat Gallery, specializing on secondary market
art works, icons, antiques and collectibles has broadened its interests to
non-conformism art, Ukrainian art of late 1980s and early 1990s and into
contemporary art.
Triptych Art Gallery, the newly formed entity will track latest trends of Ukrainian art market by bringing to the public two new exhibitions
monthly. The gallery provides art advisory services to institutional and private collectors.
The inaugural exhibition of Triptych Art Gallery will feature recent works by
Anatoly Kryvolap. The artist was born in the town of Yagotin, Kyiv region in 1946. He graduated from the Painting Department of the Kyiv State Art Institute in 1976. Anatoly Kryvolap is a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. Denis Milhaud, the curator of Augustine Museum, Toulouse wrote: “Anatoly Kryvolap, with
his strong personality, embodies the gist of figurative and expressive color by means of which his representativeness and uniqueness shine through – the color reveals itself and its fanciful rampage being more true-to-life and effective than the reality depicted by the artist.” On May 13, 2011 a painting by Anatoliy Kryvolap entitled Steppe, 2009, 140 x 200 cm, lot 310 sold for $98,500 (with an estimate of $30,000) at Phillips de Pury & Co. Contemporary Art Sale in New York. This is the record price paid for an artwork by contemporary Ukrainian artist at a public auction. The exhibition of Anatoliy Kryvolap will run from May 27 through June 9, 2011 at Triptych Art Gallery. For more information visit: www.triptych-art.com
10.05.2011 ‘Simply Art’ Charitable Auction to support the Foundation Center of Contemporary Art
 On May 13 - 20, The National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv will have a preview of lots for ‘Simply Art’ auction. Works by 70 contemporary Ukrainian artists will be offered at the auction. The selection of works include the first wave of contemporary Ukrainian artists, such as Roitburd, Silvashi, Makov, Trubina as well as those by the young generation, such as Voliazlovsky, Sai, Kachidze, Kadan, and Ridnyi.
It is for the first time that the National Art Museum of Ukraine has opened its door to the contemporary art auction. All funds raised during the auction will support future programs of the Foundation Center of Contemporary Art. The Foundation plans to realize a number of art related programs in 2011-2012, including establishing of art school for youth, art critics and journalists and developing of online art magazine KORYDOR (korydor.in.ua). The goal of the Foundation is to develop and integrate contemporary Ukrainian art into the world art process.
The auction preview will be held at the National Art Museum of Ukraine on May 13 through May 20, 2011. For more information please visit www.cca.kiev.ua or call + 380 44 221 40 49.
25.02.2011 Nonconformism and Dissent in the Soviet Bloc: Guiding Legacy or Passing Memory?
 The Ukrainian Studies Program, Harriman Institute at Columbia University, is presenting a conference entitled "Nonconformism and Dissent in the Soviet Bloc: Guiding Legacy or Passing Memory?" to be held at Columbia University March 30th - April 1st, 2011. The conference is being presented twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, a time of continued uncertainty in Eastern Europe.
The conference will focus on political and cultural nonconformism in Ukraine, Russia, and Poland in the 1960s to 80s. It will bring together an international assemblage of scholars studying that period of time as well several noteworthy dissidents and artists. The conference will offer a historical overview of the period and will present the latest research conducted on the subject. Additionally, the conference will provide an analysis of the political and cultural legacies of these movements in today’s Ukraine, Russia, and Poland.
Among the questions the conference aims to address are: Where are the dissidents and cultural leaders of the Soviet era underground today? Are they in positions of power? Are they influential political figures or gurus in contemporary culture? Do they represent their people in the world as they once did? What media forums are available for their voices? Do Ukraine, Russia, Poland, and the world need them today?
The conference will examine these issues through a series of scholarly panels as well as roundtable discussions featuring prominent Soviet-era dissidents and nonconformist artists. The three-day conference will begin with an evening keynote address by Dr. Myroslav Marynovych, former Ukrainian dissident and prisoner of conscience and, currently, Vice-rector for the University Mission of the Ukrainian Catholic University (L`viv, Ukraine); the address will be followed by a reception. Days two and three will include panels and roundtables followed by cultural programming in the evenings showcasing achievements in nonconformist film, music and literature of this era.
"Nonconformism and Dissent in the Soviet Bloc: Guiding Legacy or Passing Memory?" will feature presentations by over twenty individuals: Myroslav Marynovych, Pavel Litvinov, Henryk Wujec, Vitaly Komar, Ewa Wójciak, Volodymyr Dibrova, Mykola Riabchuk, Peter Reddaway, Ann Komaromi, Benjamin Nathans, Alexander Motyl, Justyna Beinek, Ksenya Kiebuzinski, Michael Bernhard, Jeri Laber, Mark Andryczyk, Orest Deychakiwsy, Catharine Nepomnyashchy, Anna Procyk, Christina Isajiw, William Risch, Anna Frajlich-Zajac, Yuri Shevchuk, Timothy Frye, Tarik Amar, Frank Sysyn, and Victor Morozov.
The Conference will conclude with a special North American concert by Victor Morozov, a legendary nonconformist cultural figure in Soviet Ukraine and a major recording artist in Ukraine today.
The conference is free and open to the public.
All conference panels and roundtables, as well as the keynote address, will be held in Rm. #1501, International Affairs Building, 420 West 118th St., Columbia University, New York, New York 10027. The keynote address and reception will take place on March 30th at 8PM. The panels and roundtables will begin at 9:30AM on March 31st and at 10AM on April 1st.
The film presentation will be held on March 31st at 8PM in Rm. 717 Hamilton Hall.
The Victor Morozov concert will be held on April 1st at 8PM at the Ukrainian Museum, 222 East 6th Street, New York, NY 10003.
The conference coincides with an exhibit of works by artist-dissident Opanas Zalyvakha
and a display of literature and documentary materials of the shistdesiatnyky at The
Ukrainian Museum. See www.ukrainianmuseum.org for more information.
The conference is presented by the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.
It is organized in collaboration with the East Central European Center (Columbia University), the Polish Cultural Institute (New York), and The Ukrainian Museum.
For more information please contact Mark Andryczyk at 212-854-4697 or at ukrainianstudies@columbia.edu
23.12.2010 La Roulette en Rose; the world according to Kandinsky
a.k.a. Pink Zuckerberg Show
 Shriftman Media, New York, New York, December 20, 2010
Chair and the Maiden and Fund Art Now are proud to announce the inaugural opening of CATM
chelsea to the Chelsea Art community at 500 West 22nd Street, NYC. CATM chelsea will waste no time
in bringing intriguing, controversial and timely exhibitions, shaking up the traditionally established
Chelsea community with Anton S. Kandinsky`s
La Roulette en Rose; the world according to Kandinsky
a.k.a. Pink Zuckerberg; all said and done Pop is Simple
With the debut of his new genre, Kandinsky evens the scoreboard with the use of monochromatic pinks.
Kandinsky equalizes and equates past and present icons in a contradictory and simplistic manner that
only underlies its revolutionary qualities. The derivation of the play/act of the roulette was to put faith
into a higher power, living life to its fullest and the appreciation of its continuance. It provided knowing
of purpose.
"Every Kandinsky jewel is a gleaming joke on human nature..."- Richard Vine, Editor, Art in America
A wry humorist and visual social commentator, Kandinsky has a unique perspective of world politics and
theoretical shifts of political mood. Emigrating from the Ukraine has allowed Kandinsky to see the world
from outside looking in and what he sees is a general lament for a lost, directionless world. He reflects on
past times when men were men of faith and romantic bravado, times of machismo and a time when the
world was conquerable. Kandinsky has realized what we lack, living in a world where our "men of
strength" are the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg, and finds the emasculating technological
present short of physical challenge. Not being able to satisfy the natural aggressive urge that nature has
burdened man with, man`s purpose has diminished.
With a soothsayer`s false optimism, looking through rose colored glasses at a world whose heroes are
mere impressions of historic reference, Kandinsky takes charge and confronts the world as painter and
master satirist. Kandinsky predicts... OPENING RECEPTION
13 JANUARY 2011 SIX TO EIGHT
CATM chelsea
500 WEST 22nd STREET NYC 10011
rsvp@CATMchelsea.com
www.CATMchelsea.com
www.fundartnow.org
www. chairandthemaiden.com
www.beafan.us
22.11.2010 Egor Tolkunov, paintings
 This exhibition will present paintings by Egor Tolkunov from private collections. The artist’s hometown is Kherson. The Kherson’s Art Museum has a permanent exposition of works by Tolkunov. The artist is known for his portraits, still life and genre paintings. A separate series of paintings is dedicated to visiting of Svyato-Uspensky Pskov-Pechersk Monastery. Tolkunov visits the monastery every year because one of his sons is a monk there. These works reflect personal experience of the artist and a close attachment to this holy place. The artist keeps very strong work discipline. He says: “If I do not work for even one day, I feel sick and regretful about the day spent in vain”. “To work for my own spirit” is the greatest joy of the artist.
14.11.2010 2010 Budapest Art Fair
 No fewer than 25 galleries from 12 different countries are taking part in the 2010 Budapest Art Fair – in a special new section devoted to the art of Central & Eastern Europe: HEROES CORNER.
As well as honouring the pioneering efforts of the region`s artists and galleries, HEROES CORNER refers to the Fair’s venue: the Belle Epoque Mücsarnok (Art Hall) on grandiose Hősök Tere (Heroes` Square), situated at the far end of Andrassy Avenue, the `Champs-Elysées of Central Europe.`
HEROES SQUARE has also been adopted as the new name for the Budapest Art Fair – which was founded in 1994 and this year splits into two separate events, with furniture and objets d’art granted their own fair, Antik Enteriőr, at the Ethnography Museum.
Meanwhile the rebranded flagship event – Budapest`s Modern & Contemporary Art Fair – remains on… HEROES SQUARE.
In total some sixty galleries, half from Hungary, will be exhibiting at HEROES SQUARE Budapest Art Fair. The fair runs November 25-28 (VIP opening November 24).
The Budapest Art Fair has a track record in attracting prominent foreign galleries. Prestigious past exhibitors include Pascal Lansberg (Paris), Galerie Hilger (Vienna), Le Minotaure (Paris/Tel Aviv), Knoll (Vienna/Budapest/Moscow), and Gilden’s Arts (London) – to name but a few.
Now the Fair aims to exploit Budapest’s position as an international crossroads by filling an existing vacuum: the absence of a flagship contemporary fair for Central & Eastern Europe.
Inspired by the Tremplin (Springboard) section at the 2010 Paris Biennale, the new HEROES CORNER section will feature 20 of the most dynamic modern and contemporary art galleries in Central and Eastern Europe, plus five Western galleries specializing in East European art.
Each gallery will display a single work on a special stand in the centre of the Fair. Gallery owners will be present throughout the Fair to meet visitors and talk about their artists.
The twelve countries represented on HEROES CORNER are Bosnia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and, from the West, France, Switzerland and the USA.
The geographical sweep on HEROES CORNER ranges from Sarajevo (Duplex/10m²) up to Riga (Alma, Tifāna, Rīgas)… and from New York (Artfira Gallery) across to Ekaterinburg in the Urals (Art-Slovar).
The works on offer on HEROES CORNER span a 75-year period, from a 1935 Portrait of a Girl by Pavel Filonov`s student Vladimir Luppian (Na Lenivke, Moscow) to a host of `hot-off-the-press` works produced in 2010, including Sandor Bartha`s In The Park (Ivan Gallery, Bucharest); Ritums Ivanovs` Madonna On Stage (Rīgas Galerija, Riga); and Kandinsky & Melamid`s Russian Sudoku (Art-Fira, New York).
Some paintings are overtly Political, like Tara von Neudorf`s Don`t Let Your Dreams Fall Asleep, with its Russian flag and USSR logo (Anaid Art, Bucharest), or Yevgeniy Fiks` Portrait of US Community Party member Esther Moroze (Barbarian, Zurich). Some are more Philosophical, like Łukasz Jastrubcz`s The End (Pies, Poznan) and Valery Chtak`s Why Is This Happening? (Paperworks, Moscow). Others are Geographical, like Vladimir Migachov`s Black Sea (Russkiy Mir, Paris); or Escapist, like Konstantin Batynkov`s tiny Tarzan in a black-and-white jungle (VP-Studio, Moscow).
HEROES CORNER will provide a unique, thought-provoking overview of the finest artistic talent to have blossomed since the fall of the Iron Curtain.
A strong photography section features six galleries, with startling images like Katya Belkina`s naked self-portrait on horseback, inspired by Petrov-Vodkin`s Bathing the Red Horse (Fotoloft, Moscow); a harrowing depiction of Vladimir Putin by World Press Photo Award-winner Sergey Maximishin (RussianTeaRoom, Paris); and Boštjan Pucelj`s triptych Missing In Action (Fotografija, Ljubljana).
Also available on HEROES CORNER will be graphic art, video (Adriana Jebeleanu`s Copy Paste at Little Yellow Studio, Bucharest, Alina Gutkina`s My Mom at GMG of Moscow), and a variety of sculpture – from Paolo Vivian`s iron Bar Code (Bulart, Varna – Bulgaria) and Małgorzata Warlikowska`s six-part ceramic/silkscreen Eat Your Brain Out (Galeria BB, Krakow), to Olaf Brzeski`s porcelain plates (Czarna, Warsaw) and Nazar Bilyk`s tall glass and fibre-glass figure Rain (Black Square, Kiev/New York).
One of Eastern Europe`s newest art galleries, Prospekt of Bucharest, will be taking part – and one of the region`s oldest, Slovakia`s Gandy Gallery, founded (in Prague) 18 years ago. `Central Europe deserves a great fair!` enthuses gallery owner Nadine Gandy.
To oversee the new section, and develop the Budapest Art Fair’s international profile, the Fair has appointed Simon Hewitt as International Advisor. Mr Hewitt is an Oxford University-trained art historian based in Geneva, and a respected international art critic with many years’ experience writing for Art + Auction and other leading American, British, French and Russian specialist publications. He says: ‘Budapest Art Fair is one of the oldest and most firmly established art fairs in Eastern Europe, and I admire the determination of owners Sandor & Kati Galambos to establish the Fair as the leading event of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe. These are exciting times, and I am thrilled at this opportunity to help bring international artists, gallerists and collectors to HEROES SQUARE.’
for images and further information please contact Viktória Vető
+36 20 411 3504 – press@budapestartfair.hu
More information online at www.budapestartfair.hu
03.11.2010 Grand Opening of the Museum of Russian Art
 Grand Opening of the Museum of Russian Art, featuring two exhibitions: “NO EXIT” ART and THE STORY DOESN’T END THERE
Open on Saturday and Sunday, November 13th & 14th, 1:00pm to 6:00pm
Reception on Saturday, November 13th, from 3:00pm to 6:00pm
at the Museum of Russian Art, 80 Grand St., Jersey City, NJ 07302-4522
The Museum of Russian Art (MoRA) is celebrating its grand opening in its beautifully restored space in Jersey City, just a short train ride from downtown Manhattan. On Saturday, November 13, 2010, MoRA opens with two exhibitions.
“No Exit” Art includes over forty works on paper by all of the leading figures of the Nonconformist movement, including Bulatov, Kabakov, Masterkova, Nemukhin, Sitnikov, Sveshnikov, Vassiliev, Yakovlev and Zverev. Also known as “Unofficial Art” or the “Second Avant-Garde,” Nonconformism emerged in the Soviet Union from the cultural void left by Stalinist repressions and World War II. Starting in the mid-1950s, Nonconformists worked in a stunning variety of artistic modes, boldly asserting their participation in the processes of Russian and Western art, from actionism to abstract expressionism, from tachism to pop art. But they were compelled to do this in a situation best described as “internal exile.” It was a two-fold exile. First, although they had second-hand knowledge of the living artistic world outside of the USSR, they had no access to that world. And second, while they were generally permitted to draw, paint and sculpt, they were effectively prohibited from exhibiting or publishing images of their works. The result was to isolate them from the very society in which they lived. It was an artistic life in a bubble, art with no exit. Eventually, a very partial solution was provided by art collectors who smuggled Nonconformist works to the West. But the extraordinarily difficult circumstances under which that art was produced made for one of the most intriguing and best known artistic movements of the 20th century.
As the name of the second exhibition indicates, however, The Story Doesn’t End There. This exhibition, too, features artworks on paper, by three of the most talented members of the generation that followed Nonconformism: Leonid Lerman, Elena Sarni and Vasily Kafanov. Many of the Nonconformists eventually found their “exit,” leaving the Soviet Union for Europe and the US. Born in the USSR, Lerman, Sarni and Kafanov left as young artists with the vast majority of their artistic careers still before them. They have lived for years in the West, mostly in New York, and they are as much a part of the local art world here in the West as they are of the continuing life of Russian art. For them, participation in the artistic progress of the outside world is not a forbidden paradise, but a creative life, one for which their background gives them a special appreciation. As a result, their art is more cosmopolitan than that of their predecessors; where Nonconformist aesthetics is always politically attuned, these artists are focused on artistic culture itself. But from the Nonconformists they have inherited a vision of art not as entertainment or decoration, but as a communicative act. Art must convey a kind of “message,” ineffable and intangible though that message may often be.
The exhibition will run through the middle of January.
More further inquiries please contact John William Narins at (818) 642-9225
call the museum at (201) 332-9200 or check out the museum’s new webpage www.moramuseum.org
16.09.2010 Embodying the Holy: Icons in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism
 RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART TO EXPLORE THE PARALLELS
BETWEEN EASTERN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN AND TIBETAN BUDDHIST ICONS
An upcoming exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City will examine intriguing correspondences and differences between Eastern Orthodox Christian icons and Tibetan Buddhist thangkas (paintings on cloth). Embodying the Holy: Icons in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism sheds light on parallels between the Eastern Orthodox Christian and Tibetan Buddhist sacred traditions in function, subject matter, composition, and story telling strategies, pairing some 63 icons from important private collections and The Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, Massachusetts, with 26 from the Rubin Museum of Art and other collections. A good number of works on view are canonic representations of Christian saints, teachers, and other archetypal figures. Specific to the Russian Orthodox Church is an image of Saint Nil of Stolbensk holding on to his crutches in order to remain upright and in prayer, and a c. 1750 painting of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius.
From October 8 to October 9, the Rubin Museum will host a two-day ICON Conference to coincide with the opening of Embodying the Holy. The conference will bring together leading experts on the power of religious symbolism, including a keynote discussion moderated by Kent dur Russell, Curator, Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton MA and workshops with University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, Annemarie Weyl Carr; Director, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore MD, Gary Vikan, Michael S. Flier, Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology at Harvard University, and others.
The exhibition will be on view from October 5, 2010 to March 7, 2011. For more information, please visit www.rmanyc.org. The Rubin Museum of Art is located at 150 West 17th Street, New York City.
29.06.2010 National Navy Museum will open in Sevastopol
 The National Navy Museum will open in Sevastopol on July 4th. The opening is dedicated to the Day of the Army Forces of Ukraine. The museum is located in the 19th Century Fort – Mikhailovsky Ravelin. The exposition of the museum will occupy 30 gallery halls with the total area of 2000 square meter (20,000 sq ft). On display will be periods of history of Sevastopol that include World War I, Civil War, tragic exodus of White Army from Crimea, and first years of Soviet government. Rare documents and objects have been preserved to become a part of the exposition. Among others, original drawings by Totleben, personal seal of Admiral Lazarev, original telegrams from Frunze to Wrangel commanding to surrender, documents pertaining to the second defense of Sevastopol, ammunition, navy tunics. A separate room will be dedicated to Kachinsky aviation school that was founded in Sevastopol.
The project is supported by a Ukrainian philanthropist and collector, member of the British Historic Society of Crimean War - Alexey Sheremetiev. Mr. Sheremetiev stresses that “This is a truly unique historic fortification that will be preserved down to every little detail. It is our goal to keep the structure, building materials and architectural details intact”.
16.06.2010 The Glory of Ukraine: Sacred Images from the 11th to the 19th Centuries
 TREASURES FROM THE CAVES OF UKRAINE >>>
MAKE U.S. DEBUT AT THE MUSEUM OF BIBLICAL ART >>>
Uniquely Ukrainian Approach to Iconography Featured in The Glory of Ukraine >>>
NEW YORK, May 28, 2010—The Museum of Biblical Art presents The Glory of Ukraine: Sacred Images from the 11th to the 19th Centuries, a collection of approximately 60 icons and rare objects from Kyiv’s famed Monastery of the Caves and the Lviv National Museum, from June 18 to September 12, 2010. Seldom seen by the outside world, the collection includes one of the oldest Ukrainian icons in existence together with an 11th century cross as well as textiles, chalices and other liturgical objects. Characterized by vivid hues and shimmering gold leaf, this distinctive school of icon painting persevered for a thousand years, blending Eastern and Western influences while stretching back from the Renaissance and Baroque periods to its early Byzantine roots. Delving into the rich history that forged a united national identity, the exhibition reveals how Ukrainian icon painters maintained their exacting tradition throughout centuries of political and religious strife. The show, organized by the Foundation for International Arts & Education (FIAE), makes its United States debut at MOBIA.
“Ukrainian icon painting is striking in its originality,” notes Dr. Ena Heller, Executive Director of the Museum of Biblical Art. “It was nourished by Eastern and Western artistic and religious practices, by themes drawn from the Orthodox and Catholic faiths as well as legends and folklore. We’re excited to be the first venue in the country to offer museum-goers the chance to see these magnificent works which, with one exception, have never been seen in the United States. With the rebirth of political independence, Ukraine’s cultural and religious history takes on added significance.”
Greg Guroff, President of the Foundation for International Arts & Education and organizer of the exhibition, commented: “It has been a life-long goal to bring these exquisite works to the United States for audiences to enjoy firsthand. One can simply marvel at the masterpieces....Figures in Ukrainian iconography are more human and more emotional than in the stricter canonical forms of their northern neighbors, especially in facial features where they are less severe and elongated.”
>>> Exhibition Background and Highlights >>>
Known as the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the Monastery of the Caves is an historic Orthodox Christian monastery located in Kyiv, Ukraine. Founded in 1051 by Saints Anthony and Theodosius, it is the oldest Orthodox monastery in Eastern Europe. Over the years, it attracted thousands of pilgrims from all corners of the Russian Empire. The Monastery’s vast tunneling network of subterranean caves contains living quarters and underground chapels. Only one of these objects from the Monastery of the Caves’ collection, to be displayed at MOBIA, has previously been exhibited in the United States.
The dominant feature within Ukrainian icons is the use of three colors: Gold represents the radiance of heaven, bold reds signify divine life, and bright blues symbolize human life. White stands for the essence of the divine and was reserved for exclusive use in depictions of the Resurrection and Transfiguration of Christ.
The Glory of Ukraine features one of the oldest existing Ukranian icons, the Mother of God Hodigitria, dated 1370 from the Lviv Region. The half-figure of Mary and the small figure of Christ are highly expressive. Mary is depicted with broad sloping shoulders, wearing a mantle with deep geometric folds, visually anchoring the icon, while the figure of Christ is rendered with freedom and confidence. The elongated bodies are out of proportion with the size of the heads, hands and feet. The faces are painted with great skill and delicacy.
Other notable works on display include the Cross of the Holy Monk Mark of the Caves (Encolpion), which has not been on view in the United States since 1997 (The Glory of Byzantium, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). This rare pectoral reliquary cross dates back to the 11th-century founding of the Monastery of the Caves during the pre-Mongol period of Kyivan Rus’. Unusually large, with Greek inscriptions and intersecting bars at right angels, it is considered to be very distinctive and is believed to have belonged to one of the early monks of the Monastery, Mark, who was responsible for burials in the Caves. He died in the late 11th century and is buried in a grave in the Caves that he dug himself.
Also of note is a rare icon portraying the Congregation of All the Saints of Pechersk Lavra, (late 18th-early 19th centuries, Kyiv). The icon portrays the numerous saints of The Monastery of the Caves, monks and ascetics whose stories are described in the Kyiv-Pechersk Paterik at the beginning of the 13th century. The icon was created to honor the official canonization of these 118 saints, whose remains are kept in the Caves of the Lavra. A 176-page hard-bound exhibition catalog features full-page illustrations and individual annotations for each of the 77 objects in the exhibition. The Glory of Ukraine: Sacred Images from the 11th to the 19th Centuries features two essays written by Ukrainian scholars that explore the “Ukrainian School of Iconography” along with an historical overview of “The Kyiv-Pechersk National Historical and Cultural Preserve.” Additional information online at www.mobia.org
31.05.2010 ЯКЩО/ ЕСЛИ/ IF
Ukrainian Art in Transition
 On May 21, a major exhibition of Ukrainian contemporary art opens at the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art in Perm, Russia. `ЯКЩО/ЕСЛИ/IF` will be the first large-scale show of Ukrainian art beyond that country`s borders, and is the brainchild of the museum and the Moscow-based curator Ekaterina Degot.
The exhibition features art that reflects the distinctive contours of Ukrainian life after the Orange Revolution – an unstable but productive ferment, full of contradictions, promises from politicians, hope for a new post-Communist footing, and disenchantment with neoliberalism. Ukrainian art of that period is one facet of an outpouring of revolutionary and creative energy.
The main part of the exhibition showcases around 100 works by 30 artists. They are grouped into 4 sections: `Maidan` focuses on political and public art. `Wonderland` includes critical reflections on nationalism and bureaucratic notions of ethnic identity. `Phantoms` shows visionary painting, and `Dreamers` is for reflections on the social and emotional underpinnings of contemporary Ukraine.
Participating artists include Sergei Bratkov, Olexandr Gnylytsky, Arsen Savadov, and younger talents such as Zhanna Kadyrova and the R.E.P. and Soska groups.
A special section of the exhibition – `Histories` – explores unofficial Soviet art from the 1980s until the beginning of the 1990s, a formative time for today`s artists. There are Ukrainian paintings from the collection of Marat Guelman, conceptual and naive art from the collection of the Odessa- and Kiev-based artist and curator Alexandr Roytburd, and an exposition of the Kharkov school of underground photography, which gave rise to Boris Mikhailov and Sergei Bratkov.
The show opens with lectures and discussions with Ukrainian artists. Some elements of the project will be staged in the city itself, and there will be a catalog in Russian and English.
23.04.2010 Alexander Melamid
OH MY GOD
Russian painter and conceptual artist Alexander Melamid is to have a solo exhibition of thirty paintings at
Phillips de Pury & Company in London. Including the now renowned series of life-size portraits of hip-hop
stars such as Snoop Doggy Dog, 50 Cent and Kanye West, the paintings then shift from ‘fame’ to the
‘mundane’, with a further group of works from 2008 that have so far remained unseen, including portraits of
priests and rabbis, Russian oligarchs, sculptures of ancient Roman figures, animals and stones. Melamid
himself is the first to point out the incongruity and irony of these more recent portraits, including within the
selection a self-portrait of himself as ‘God’: the ‘artist creator of confusion, incomprehension and absurdity’.
For Melamid (an artist who whilst still living in the Soviet Union saw his works being bulldozed by the state),
the repercussions of the fall of communism became clear only after the collapse of the Russian Communist
Empire and were mainly connected to the failure of the officially stated goal of the Soviet regime: the creation
of a ‘New Man’. In the twenty years since Perestroika, Marxist philosophy, the teachings of Freud, theories of
existentialism and many of the other -isms and ideologies that exerted influence in the post-war world have
disintegrated, leaving a void of fragmentation and pluralisms in their place. For many people of Melamid’s
generation, this void and lack of belief is accompanied by a sense of guilt, that they had perhaps been the
‘jihadists’ for the wrong cause.
In a world where art is judged by how well it reaffirms the preexisting beliefs of its consumers, the role of the
artist seems also to be shifting from that of being the ‘messenger’ to being the ‘creator’. Melamid’s portraits
speak not only of Shelley’s Ozymandias notion of a previous glory now only existing through its decaying
monuments, but also of the processes of growth, change and decay that exist in the world, such as religious
and political beliefs, fame, philosophies, beauty, bling and the natural world. In his performance at Phillips de
Pury & Company, Melamid will show the tangible benefits of good (actually, great!) art for arts sake - his own
included - and furthermore will demonstrate art’s healing power and medicinal properties for the treatment of
physical and mental maladies. Melamid begs the question: Should the judgement for the works of Lucien
Freud be Are they good for your liver?
Alexander Melamid (b. 1945) first became known in the USA when still working as part of the duo Komar
& Melamid after their emigration from the Soviet Union in 1977. Together they were known for their creation of
Sots Art, a Russian version of pop art that satirized Soviet Socialist Realism and later was used throughout
the post-communist countries. During their almost 40 year collaboration, the duo were noted as
revolutionaries and, at times, rebels. Their work was often compared to that of Pop artists Andy Warhol and
Roy Lichtenstein. Komar and Melamid`s career began in Soviet Russia, where they met during an anatomy
drawing class in a morgue. They started working together almost immediately, exhibiting first at the Blue Bird
Café in Moscow in 1967. Komar and Melamid often faced government opposition and harassment. In 1974,
they exhibited Paradise, a Moscow apartment covered with light fixtures and small sculptural figures in
various historical styles and movements; audience members were locked inside and forced to listen to official
Soviet radio. The installation was demolished on state order shortly after it opened. Just one year later, they
participated in the Bulldozer Show, an outdoor exhibition that was also bulldozed by the government. These
and other occurrences resulted in their expulsion from associations such as the youth section of the Moscow
Artists Union and the Graphic Artists` Association.
In February of 1976, Komar & Melamid`s first U.S. exhibition opened at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York.
Biography of Our Contemporary garnered rave reviews and launched the artists into the international spotlight.
Following this success, they applied for exit visas to enter the U.S but were twice denied by the Soviet
government. In response they declared they had created their own "state," entitled TransState, with a
constitution, alphabet, language, passport, currency, and border post. Eventually, they were allowed to
emigrate to Israel and moved to New York shortly thereafter. That same year, 1978, their first museum
exhibition, Komar & Melamid: Matrix 43, opened at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford,
Connecticut. In 1982, they mounted another show at the Feldman gallery Sots Art which resulted in critical
success, and within the year The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, had acquired their work. Acquisitions by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London soon followed and the pair subsequently had more than sixty solo
exhibitions worldwide.
Among their most famous works together was People’s Choice, a piece of consumer research in the late 1990s
where they hired a consumer research company to conduct a poll of seventeen countries to investigate their
tastes in art.
In 2003, very soon after Komar & Melamid began to work separately, Melamid’s son Dan, introduced him to the
world of hip-hop, which included his clients and close friends Whoo Kid and 50 Cent. Melamid was intrigued
by hip-hop society because of its rich history and world appeal, and began to paint the portraits in this
exhibition.
In 2008 Melamid stayed in Rome for eight months and his exposure to the portrait busts and sculptures of
Ancient Rome of people so long gone but still ubiquitous became a defining inspiration for the latest
portraits. Whilst acknowledging the strength of the beauty of the works, he was also fascinated by the fact
that one so rarely knows, or indeed cares, whom they depict.
For further press information or images please contact:
Rhiannon Pickles PR rhiannonpickles@mac.com
15.02.2010 The Christian Brinton Collection of Russian Art
 In 1941 the noted art critic and curator Christian Brinton (American, 1870-1942) donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art an important collection of modern art from Eastern Europe, some of which is on view at the museum now. Over the course of his thirty-five-year career, Brinton wrote more than two hundred articles and organized numerous exhibitions that introduced American audiences to prominent Russian artists, such as David Burliuk, Boris Grigoriev, John Graham (born in Ukraine, Ivan Dabrowsky), and Viktor Palmov. By 1932, when Brinton curated a large exhibition of modern Russian art in Wilmington, Delaware, many progressive artists from the Soviet Union had been forced into exile in the United States for their opposition to Joseph Stalin’s ruthless totalitarian regime. In the exhibition catalogue Brinton claimed that the work of these émigré Russian artists “seldom disassociates itself from nature and from life,” which they sought to “intensify” and “magnify” through their dreamlike paintings. Brinton was attracted to brightly colored, folkloric compositions, which explain why he also championed the work of the Hungarian painter Bela Kadar, the German Expressionist Heinrich Campendonk, and the African American artist Horace Pippin, who painted Brinton’s portrait in 1940.
03.01.2010 Museum of Modern Art of Ukraine
 The first private museum dedicated to modern and contemporary Ukrainian art has opened in Podol district of Kyiv. The Museum of Modern Art of Ukraine was founded by a businessman, the president of Jewelers Association of Ukraine, Serhiy Tsupko in June of 2005. Yet, only now the museum has re-opened in its new building.
The new address of the museum is Hlybochytska Street 17. The museum occupies a newly renovated space of 3,500 sq m (approximately 35,000 sq ft). Works by 500 Ukrainian artists are represented in the museum’s collection. The collection reflects upon the artists, art schools and art periods that were active in Ukraine during 20th through early 21st Centuries.
In its collection the museum has over 4,500 works of art comprising one of the largest Ukrainian art collection of paintings, works on paper, sculpture and decorative art.
It represents the largest private Museum collection in Ukraine that was assembled over the period of 20 years. The museum is actively acquiring new works at the market, from artists and through field research in all regions of Ukraine. The museum is a private, non-commercial entity. Its goal is to research, collect and preserve works by Ukrainian artists in Ukraine and in all other countries where Ukrainian artists lived and worked.
On view at the museum’s permanent collection are works by such artists as: V. Khmelko, I. Kavaleridze, I. Pleshynsky, I. Trusz, O. Novakivsky, A. Erdeli, Tatyana and Olena Yablonsky, V. Bernadsky, K. Zvirynsky, R. Selsky, M. Hlushchenko, M. Vanshtein, V. Zaretsky and others. A separate exposition room of the museum is dedicated to the Ukrainian Icon of the XVII – XIX centuries. At the opening reception of the museum there was a “street art” performance done by a young artist from Odessa, Oleksandr Milov – study for the monument of Stepan Bandera made out of scotch tape, wire and water pipes.
The museum occupies a three story building. On view on the first floor are works from the project “Art map of Ukraine” by artists from Odessa. Second and third floor galleries are dedicated to the museum’s permanent collection.
In the near future the museum plans to open chambers dedicated to unique Ukrainian gemstones and precious stones, a room for children organized in collaboration with the Astrid Lindgren Foundation, exhibition of Kharkiv artists, personal exhibitions of young Ukrainian artists.
The museum will also feature an art research library with a lecture hall for 50-60 seats where activities such as master classes, seminars, round tables, conferences and symposiums will be organized.
General admission to the museum is 10 hryvna for adults and 5 hryvna for students. Children under 16 and seniors – free.
13.12.2009 The Conversations
 Works by Ukrainian artists are on exhibit at the Acqualine Resort & Spa on the Beach, a luxury hotel in Miami, Florida. Exhibition is open for private viewing only at the hotel’s penthouse daily from 4:00pm till 7:00pm. The exhibition is organized by Mironova Gallery, Kyiv jointly with Firebird Group and Acqualine Resort & Spa on the Beach in cooperation with Karen Lynne Gallery and International Art Centre Maecenas. For more information please call 305-918-8000.
08.11.2009 OVER THE WALL
FOR THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL
 NEW YORK, 10/18/09 - Art Next Gallery is pleased to announce a group exhibition of contemporary Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, German, and New York based artists “Over the Wall”. The exhibition will be held from November 12 to December 30 at Art Next Gallery, located at 530 West 25th Street, 3rd Floor. Opening reception will be on Thursday, November 12th, from 6-8pm.
From Perestroika to Global Financial Crisis, From Berlin Wall to “Great Wall” of China, From Sots Art to Pop Art, and from Socialist Realism to Political Pop Art – the show for the first time brings together works by most distinguished contemporary artists whose artistic careers skyrocketed as a result of the geopolitical changes that occurred over the last 20 years.
The show not only focuses on the tangible and visible Berlin Wall that has become a relic of history, but takes a broader viewpoint on historical events of the last few decades. Today one can witness the presence of an invisible wall – as a symbol of brutality, rape, authoritarian regime and human ignorance. It is a wall that deprives our freedom of choice. It had not been easy to dismantle the visible wall but to let the invisible wall go down may be even harder.
Events of the last twenty years, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, have changed the way we live and think. The destruction in 2001 of the World Trade Center in New York City and the beginning of the War on Terror, followed by the World Financial Crisis of 2008 are only some of the events that have created boundaries to our freedom and lifestyle.
Art, as the most deliberate and complex means of communication, can help nations overcome long histories of reciprocal distrust, insularity and conflict. Featured works in the exhibition visually explore an array of multifaceted political and social events, the leap from communism to capitalism (and back), the political and cultural boundaries that separate unified nations, and the roles of influential political leaders of both the West and the East.
The show will feature works by such well-known artists as Alexander Melamid, Ai Weiwei, and for the first time works by world renowned fashion designer Marc Ecko. Overall, seventeen artists from six different countries will be represented in the exhibition, including Alexander Melamid, Anton S. Kandinsky and Marc Ecko (New York), Ilya Chichkan, Alexander Roitburd and Yuri Solomko (Ukraine), Yuriy Balashov and Alexey Salmanov (Russia), Ai Weiwei, Lao Liu, Zheng Lianjie, Zhang Hongtu, Zhang Dali, Ji Shengli and Chen Weiming (China), Lorenz Haarmann (Germany) and Robert Bery (Israel).
The show was organized by Art Next Gallery in collaboration with artfira.com. Art Next Gallery is dedicated to creating an East-West discourse by spotlighting the greatest artistic talents ascending across Asia and emerging here in New York. By featuring both emerging and established artists from Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and New York, Art Next offers the Chelsea gallery community a unique confluence of cross-cultural vitality, shifting perspectives, and the newest voices of artistic identity. Art Next Gallery, located in the heart of Chelsea, functions as a gallery and event venue for artists, auctions, and various private events.
Over the Wall exhibition is curated by David Rong and Alex Demko.
A catalogue in English and Chinese will accompany the exhibition.
For additional information, please contact Gallery Director, David Rong at 212-206-1668 or artnextgallery@gmail.com for up to date information please visit www.artnextgallery.com
01.11.2009 "B/W.5x5"
 On October 21, 2009 in Lviv opened a photo club “B/W.5x5”. Its goal is to become a center for enthusiasts of photography. The photo club opened with an exhibition of Igor Haidai “Ukrainians. Beginning of the Third Millenium,” featuring five photographs on the façade of the building and five in the gallery of the club. Igor Haidai became the first member of the club and thirty other people joined.
The photo club will show photographs and video presentations. It will hold photo-art discussions, lectures, master classes, slide-shows and gatherings for those, who have interest in photography. The exhibition will change every month. Address of the club-café is Koliyivshyny Square 2, one block away from the Market Place.
09.10.2009 Arts Lottery by CEC Arts Link
 Arts Lottery – a drawing by lottery for original works by a brilliant array of international artists. The event will take place at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts at 31 Mercer Street, New York City on Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 6:30pm. CEC ArtsLink is an international arts organization. Its programs encourage and support exchange of artists and cultural managers between the United States and Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus. CEC ArtsLink believes that the arts are a society’s most deliberate and complex means of communication, and that artists and arts administrators can help nations overcome long histories of reciprocal distrust, insularity and conflict.
With solid expertise and lasting partnerships in 30 countries, CEC ArtsLink promotes communication and understanding through innovative, mutually beneficial collaborative projects. CEC was founded in 1962 to enable citizens of the United States and the Soviet Union to accomplish what their governments could not – opening doors, sharing ideas and building mutual trust. In today’s transformed and complex world, citizen diplomacy is still urgently needed.
For additional information call Zhenia Stadnik at 212-643-1985x26. www.cecartslink.org
13.09.2009 Dance | Trash | Glamour
Photographs by Alexey Salmanov
 Sputnik Gallery is pleased to announce its Grand Opening celebration featuring Alexey Salmanov’s debut exhibition in the United States, Dance | Trash | Glamour.
Dance | Trash | Glamour consists of select works from All God’s Children Can Dance, a project that explores what remains when the material world collapses around us and all that is left is a meaningless pile of debris. All God’s Children Can Dance features two accomplished dancers, the Ukrainian Dancing with the Stars it‐girl Alyona Shoptenko and break dancing star Maxim “Cat”. The subjects are freed from the gloss, glamour and fashion of the magazine cover and are instead surrounded by a destroyed material world. The debris exposes the fragility and impermanence of glamour, and we wonder what, if anything, remains when all of our comforts and possessions are taken away. As the finite nature of the material world becomes evident, personal relationships intensify, and loneliness, intimacy, domination, submission, fear and liberation reveal themselves. The pair’s style and grace conflict with – and persist in spite of – the ruins surrounding them. Human spirit and determination triumph. We soon discover that the subjects are not trapped in the emptiness and decay surrounding them, but rather that they have been freed from the trap of material desires. Although Dance | Trash | Glamour is Alexey Salmanov’s first show in the United States, his work has been exhibited and well received in Russia and Ukraine. In fact, he has recently made the shortlist for the 2009 PinchukArtCentre Prize for contemporary art by young artists. The winner will be announced in October. Alexey was born in Rostov‐on‐Don, Russia in 1976. He currently lives and works in Kiev, Ukraine. The exhibition will continue through October 10, 2009. Sputnik Gallery is located at 547 West 27th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Telephone: 1 212 695 5747. www. sputnikgallery.com
03.09.2009 NOW - ART OF THE 21ST CENTURY
 London – July 6 – Phillips de Pury & Company announces today the launch
of a new series of themed auctions of contemporary art and culture to be
held in London and New York.
Each sale will be a considered selection of quality property in a range of
values to reflect the chosen theme and will draw upon the expertise of the
Contemporary Art, Photographs, Design and Editions departments.
Simon de Pury, Chairman Phillips de Pury & Company says:
“Phillips de Pury& Company has consistently been staging the most
pioneering sales of contemporary art, design and photography and this new
dynamic platform will enable each department to interpret a given theme and
express their curatorial strengths. These sales will be ground-breaking and
taste-making and be a great compliment to our core auction programme.”
Commencing with the first sale of the season, Now: Art of the 21st Century,
in London on September 12, a further three sales will take place alternatively
between New York and London at the Phillips de Pury galleries in London at
Howick Place, SW1 and in New York in Chelsea.
Now: Art of the 21st Century will offer the most exciting works of art, design
and photography to be made since the Millenium and that will come define
our current epoch. A new catalogue format that builds upon each theme of each sale with articles is being developed
and will be released to the public two weeks before the sale.
In addition to this schedule of new sales, this fall season, Phillips de Pury & Company will conduct
classic sales in Contemporary Art, Design, Photographs and Editions in concentrated blocks in
London during October’s Frieze Art Fair week and in New York in November to coincide with
traditional contemporary art sales week. More information onlite at www.phillipsdepury.com or over the phone at +44 20 7318 4071.
24.06.2009 THE NEW BLUE RIDERS.
Anton S. Kandinsky, Sophie Matisse, Laurance Rassin and David Noah Burliuk
 NEW YORK, June 23, 2009- Art Next Gallery is pleased to announce the first exhibition of The New Blue Riders, a newly formed group, taken from the historic Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). The exhibition will be held from June 23 to July 18th at Art Next Gallery, located at 530 West 25th Street, 3rd Floor.
The New Blue Riders exhibit is a multifaceted and multidisciplinary event, showcasing the works of Anton S. Kandinsky, Sophie Matisse, and David Noah Burliuk and Laurance Rassin, founding members of the group.
Displaying inherited styles of artistic expression by Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, David Burliuk, these four leading New York-based artists merge their talents to create the group, The New Blue Riders. Illustrated in the members’ art work you will see references of impressionism, expressionism, contemporary-expressionism, neo-fauvism and gemism.
“Collectively, we anticipate our work to inspire and challenge traditional forms,” said Laurance Rassin, artistic director of the group. “Our purpose is to exhibit new forms of expressionism in a group setting and plan on growing the group, welcoming other artists that have the same goals.”
The artists will showcase works including traditional oil paintings, bronze sculpture, photography, ceramics, tapestries, furniture and music. To accommodate such variety, three events with the artists will take place on June 23rd, July 2nd and July 16th.
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was originally founded in Munich, Germany by a group of artists including led by Wassily Kandinsky, and lasted from 1911 to 1914. The group was formed in response to the rejection of Kandinsky`s painting Last Judgement from an exhibition.
Anton S. Kandinsky is known for his “Gemism” paintings, works inspired by and decorated with gem stones. Kandinsky declared Gemism as a new independent movement in contemporary art. He founded Gemism in New York in 2004. In 2007-2008 Kandinsky showed paintings from his series “Meditation of Weapons” in New York, Chicago, Beijing and Kiev. Six new paintings by Kandinsky from his new series “Chinism” and “I don’t want to be a Russian artist” will be shown at the exhibition.
Laurance Rassin with his works creates a sumptuous and color filled world, enveloping his audience in signature large scale impasto oil paintings, bronze sculptures, ceramics, tapestries, and textiles in a way that is uniquely Rassin. Weaving an over-arching narrative with over 500 original works of art, Laurance fuses humor to his whimsical characters and interior scenes allowing his fictional almost cinematic stories to unfold. With Rassin`s work now featured regularly at Bonhams & Butterfields, 20th Century in Manhattan, he has shown not only auction house appeal, but also terrific pop appeal.
David Noah Burliuk, founding member of “The New Blue Riders” is a New York artist. He was born in 1983 in New York and studied architecture at SUNY Delhi where he earned his bachelors degree in 2009. Currently he works as an architectural designer for Lobas architects. As the Great Grandson of Russian Futurist David Davidovich Burliuk, David Noah Burliuk continues the family tradition of producing futuristic works of art in sculpture, watercolor, oil, and architecture. His oil paintings and ceramic pieces were featured in the 2008 Hamptons Designer Showhouse, as well as other charitable events in the Hamptons.
Sophie Matisse studied at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, as well as at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but her career as a painter began in 1997 when she showed a painting called Be Back in Five Minutes in the vault of a bank in New York City. The painting was a painted replica of Leonard da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with one noteworthy difference: she removed the female figure, La Jocconda, leaving visible only a balustrade and the background landscape. The picture was followed by an entire series of pictures where figures and animals—all living things—were removed from famous paintings (a series that later became known as the “removal series”). Her next series involved interweaving well-known historical paintings in a zebra-stripe pattern with colorful images excised from notebooks that she kept over the years (resulting in pictures that are now referred to as the “Zebra Stripes”). Her work has continued in a similar vein to this day, but she has recently branched out to utilize vivid color patterns reminiscent of Matisse (her great-grandfather) on wine and perfume bottles, which she is currently planning to execute on a grand scale in a series of monumental sculptures.
About Art Next Gallery
Art Next Gallery is dedicated to creating an East-West discourse by spotlighting the greatest artistic talents ascending across Asia. By featuring both emerging and established artists from Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and beyond. Art Next offers the Chelsea gallery community a unique confluence of cross-cultural vitality, shifting perspectives, and the newest voices of artistic identity. Art Next Gallery, located in the heart of Chelsea, functions as a gallery and event venue for artists, auctions, and various private events. The exhibition will continue through July 18, 2009.
For additional information, please contact Gallery Director, David Rong at 212-206-1668 or artnextgallery@gmail.com >>> www.artnextgallery.com
09.06.2009 TARAS POLATAIKO at Volta 5, Basel, Switzerland
 PRISKA C. JUSCHKA FINE ART exhibits works by Ukrainian conceptual artist, Taras Polataiko at "Volta 5" Art Fair in Basel at Booth K1. Polataiko is known for his paintings, photographs, sculpture, videos and performative installations. The artist deals with the history of the medium and develops projects that favor interactions. These pieces form a critique of societies` control over their citizens, giving concrete shape to the imperceptible, just as they speak to us about intellectual contamination and transformation – about what spreads and seeps into the collective unconscious. More information about the show at http://voltashow.com
31.05.2009 Cell Memory. BABA. Works by Valya Roenko.
 CELL MEMORY by Valentyna Roenko Simpson.
OMA Parker Gallery, May 4 – July 2, 2009.
Artist Valentyna Roenko Simpson has created a fiber installation that addresses the potential that DNA holds for unlocking the secrets of human ancestry. Roenko Simpson’s fiber media portraits appear individualized, yet they are also universal, suggesting a link reaching back to the origins of human history. Themes of identity, ancestry, science and memory permeate her artistic vision. Cell Memory will be on view in the Parker Gallery May 4th through July 2, 2009. “Meet the Artist” Valentyna Roenko Simpson on Saturday, June 20th at 2:00 p.m. and hear her talk about the universal thread of humanity that lies within our DNA. “Meet the Artist” is free with museum admission and complimentary for members of Oceanside Museum of Art as a benefit of membership.
“Each face is a symbol of mother eve” according to Roenko Simpson whose portraits are embroidered with wrinkles to symbolize the story that lies deep within the lines of a person’s face. Each portrait will be graphically designed by Roenko Simpson, hand felted with merino wool and machine embroidered.
Roenko Simpson was born in the Volyn Region, Ukraine and earned a Masters of Art and Design from Lviv Academy of Decorative Art in 1978. She has experimented in many different fields of fiber art including silk tapestries and silk paintings. Since 2000, Roenko Simpson has been living and exhibiting in California discovering the amazing possibilities of quilt and felt art.
More information at www.oma-online.org
28.04.2009 Russian Art Week in New York
 Russian Art Week in New York is over. Sotheby’s sale took place on April 22 and Christie’s on April 24. With sales rooms’ half empty, prices lower than last year and fewer lots offered – both sales proved to be firm and successful.
01.04.2009 Best 100 works from private Ukrainian collections
 Works from private collections as well as collections of art galleries will be provided for public view. Featured will be works by Ukrainian and Russian artists of the 19th and 20th Centuries. A catalogue to accompany the exhibition will be available. The exhibition is organized by Ihor Ponamarchuk, the head of the Antiques Guild of Ukraine. The exhibition is open to the public.
27.03.2009 Peasant portraits by Panas Yarmolenko
 Proun gallery (Moscow) in collaboration with Rodovid Gallery (Kyiv), Ukrainian Center of Folk Culture “Museum of Ivan Honchar” (Kyiv) and Multimedia Complex of Contemporary Art, Moscow present exhibition of Ukrainian artist Panas Yarmolenko (1886-1953). On exhibit 25 paintings by Yarmolenko as well as early 20th Century photographs. Special thanks to the Konstantin Hryhoryshyn for his support of the exhibition.
08.03.2009 The Armory Show, New York
 The Armory Show in New York provides an interesting look at today’s art world. Huge number of collectors and art lovers attended the show at piers 92 and 94. Other fares – Bridge Art Fair, Fountain Art Fair, Pool Art Fair New York, Scope New York and Volta NY. All together seven different and very exciting art fairs happening in New York between March 5 and March 8, 2009.
23.02.2009 The Krychevskys’ Artistic Dynasty
 “The Krychevskys’ Artistic Dynasty” will be exhibited at the Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago
The Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago, located in the heart of the Ukrainian Village, is proud to present an exhibition of works of four generations of the renowned Krychevsky family. This is the first opportunity for the public to view, in a single location, the works of Vasyl H. Krychevsky alongside that of his daughter, grand daughter and great granddaughter. The opening of the exhibit is March 6, 2009 at 7:00 pm at the Ukrainian National Musuem. The exhibit will continue through April 26, 2009.
Showcased in the exhibit are works from the famous Ukrainian artist, Vasyl H. Krychevsky, his daughter, Halyna Krychevska-Linde, his granddaughter, Oksana Linde de Ochoa, and his great-granddaughter, Blanca M. Linde. Watercolors and oil paintings from the collection of Vasyl Linde Krychevsky will be featured. The Krychevsky family of artists has created a rich and abundant inheritance that is treasured by Ukrainians and art lovers alike. Included in this exhibit are oils, watercolors and mixed media art works that weave a tapestry which spans four generations.
An outstanding and dynamic personality in his own time, Vasyl Krychevsky was an architect, artist, scholar, educator, father of the “Ukrainian National Style” and founder and President of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts. A prolific artist, Vasyl Krychevsky left his imprint on Ukrainian art and culture. His prizewinning designs in architecture initiated an entire movement in Ukrainian architecture. As a painter, Krychevsky was one of the founders of contemporary book design reviving woodcut techniques producing over 80 cover designs. After World War II he and his family lived in Paris and later emigrated to South America. His legacy lives not only in his contributions to Ukrainian art, architecture, and culture, but also in the works of his talented and gifted progeny.
Halyna Krychevska-Linde was, in her own right, a talented artist and an intellectual luminary. She was a freedom fighter who led anti-Nazi resistance efforts and fought for the preservation of Ukrainian national art, architecture and ideals. She is credited with the foresight to preserve her father’s art by sending it beyond Ukrainian borders to safe locations in Paris and finally in Venezuela. A prolific artist, Halyna Krychevska-Linde, created elaborate embroidery pieces, hand-made tapestries, ceramics and paintings.
Oksana Linde De Ochoa, the granddaughter of Vasyl H. Krychevsky, is a multi talented artist and music composer. A chemist by profession, she has participated in many group, solo and virtual art exhibitions since 1968. Oksana Linde de Ochoa has worked in media including oil, watercolor, acrylic, ink, mixed media, collages and ceramics.
Blanka M. Linda, the great granddaughter of Vasyl H. Krychevsky, has inherited the talent that runs in her family. She has worked in acrylic, ink, watercolor, applied arts, ceramics, and mixed media. She has had solo and group exhibits in Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland and Missouri since 1991. She has also completed multiple commissioned paintings and murals.
The Ukrainian National Museum is located at 2249 West Superior Street in Chicago. Hours: Thursday through Sunday, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, and Monday through Wednesday by appointment only. Admission: Adults $5.00, Children under 12 – Free. For more information please visit the museum’s website: www.ukrainiannationalmuseum.org. For further information, contact Anna Chychula at (312) 421-8020 or email to admin@ukrainannationalmuseum.org
05.12.2008 ARTemigrants exhibition
 The idea to show works by Ukrainian artists who live outside of Ukraine appeared to the exhibition curator, Mychajlo Schevchenko while visiting Moscow. Two of his old friends, Sergei Bazelev and Sergei Geta have moved to Moscow in the late 1970s where they became well known artists. In fact, well know Russian artists, whose works are in a permanent collection of the Tretyakov Museum. Yet, those who followed art related events of the late 1970s and early 1980s remember Bazelev and Geta as very active artists of Kyiv art scene.
Many of the artists who moved out of Ukraine did so in search of artistic liberties and free artistic expression not allowed in Kyiv at that time. The fact is that many talented and promising mid-career and well established artists of Ukraine of the 1980s and 1990s, now live and work in places like Moscow, Paris and New York. The good news is that The Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art in Kyiv with its series of ART emigrants exhibitions wants to show works by such artists in Ukraine.
On view paintings, sculpture, photographs and works on paper by Anton Solomoukha (France), Sergei Bazelev, Sergei Geta, Sergei Sherstiuk (1951-1988) (Russia), and Yevgeniy Prokopov, Anton Skorubsky, Eugene Gordiets (USA). Curated by Mychajlo Schevchenko, director of the Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art in Kyiv. A full color, 194 pages catalogue is available for sale.
For more information please email to musom@isv.com.ua or call +380-44-463-7669. Address: 14 Bratska Street, Kyiv 04070, Ukraine. The museum is open daily from 11:00am – 7:00pm. Closed on Mondays. Admission is free.
26.10.2008 Futurism and after: David Burliuk,1882-1967
 THE UKRAINIAN MUSEUM PRESENTS FUTURISM AND AFTER: DAVID BURLIUK, 1882-1967
>>>ARTIST CONSIDERED THE FATHER OF UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN FUTURISM
>>>FIRST BURLIUK SURVEY OF ITS KIND IN THE UNITED STATES IN NEARLY HALF A CENTURY
(New York, NY) -- Futurism and After: David Burliuk, 1882-1967, a large-scale exhibition with more than a hundred works, along with photographs of the artist and some of his personal belongings, provides an overview of the most important periods in the life of famed Futurist David Burliuk. The exhibition opens to the public October 31, at The Ukrainian Museum, a state-of-the-art, 25,000-square-foot facility located at 222 East 6th Street, in Manhattan’s East Village. The exhibition will be on view through March 1, 2009. Admission: $8.00 adults; $6.00 seniors; $6.00 students (with valid ID); children under 12 - free; Museum members - free. Additional information can be found at www.ukrainianmuseum.org/burliuk or by calling the Museum at 212.228.0110.
The exhibition is the first major U.S. show of Burliuk’s art in nearly half a century. Internationally renowned as the father of Futurism in his native Ukraine and in Russia, Burliuk was a major contributor to the seminal period of modernism in the early decades of the 20th century. He was the last living contributor to Germany’s Blaue Reiter movement, one of the first modernist movements in art. With reference to an exhibition at the American Contemporary Artists Gallery in New York in 1967, the year of Burliuk`s death, The New York Times wrote: “the paint meets the spectator half-way, for it’s loaded on almost to the depth of bas relief to give the bright landscapes and flowers a reality that occasionally becomes a sur-reality – this is painting at its most high-spirited; as such it communicates the great vitality that obviously went into making it.”
“Many of these works have not been exhibited in New York City, so this is a unique opportunity to take a close and rare look at the whole career of one of the 20th century’s important avant-garde artists through the prism of his own collection, now in the possession of his granddaughter,” said Professor Jaroslaw Leshko, President of the Board of Trustees of The Ukrainian Museum.
Futurism and After: David Burliuk, 1882-1967, is made possible by the generosity of Mary Clare Burliuk, the artist’s granddaughter, who lent works of art and archival material from her extensive personal collection.
The exhibition at The Ukrainian Museum is an expanded version of the traveling show organized by the Winnipeg Art Gallery, curated by Dr. Myroslav Shkandrij, Professor of German and Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba. It includes examples of Burliuk’s work during his early years in Ukraine and Russia (1907-1918), his travels through Siberia (1918-1920), his time in Japan (1920-1922), and his life in the United States, both in New York City (1922-1941) and on Long Island (1941-1967).
At The Ukrainian Museum, the approximately 70 works displayed in Winnipeg are being supplemented by an additional 40 paintings from Ms. Burliuk’s collection.
A richly illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition; it includes a lead essay by Dr. Shkandrij and contributing essays by Dr. Myroslava Mudrak, Professor of Art History at Ohio State University, and art and social historian Ihor Holubizky at the University of Queensland.
David Burliuk was born in 1882 near the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. He studied in Odesa and Kazan, at the Munich Royal Academy of Arts (1902-1903), and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1904). His exuberant and extroverted character was recognized by Anton Azhbe, his professor at the Munich Academy, who called Burliuk a “wonderful wild steppe horse.”
Burliuk’s art during his historically important early period was an amalgam of Fauvist, Cubist, and Futurist influences, which he absorbed and combined with his love of nature, a fascination for the forms and designs of Scythian culture (he formed and named the literary-artistic group “Hylaea” — the Greek name for ancient Scythian lands), and especially his admiration for Ukrainian folklore. Among his favorites was the legend of Mamai, a Cossack who embodied Burliuk’s own vision of bravery, self-sufficiency, and rugged individualism.
During these years, Burliuk was an active participant in important avant-garde exhibitions in Kyiv, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Munich. Dr. Shkandrij writes: “From December 1913 to April 1914, the notoriety of the Futurists reached its peak as Burliuk, [Vladimir] Maiakovsky, and [Vasily] Kamensky toured 17 cities in the [Russian] Empire. The appearance of the Futurists (they liked to wear gaudy waistcoats, sometimes painted animals on their faces and wore carrots in their lapels) and their ‘performances,’ which included drinking tea on stage under a suspended piano, drew packed audiences, scandalized many, but also won converts to the new art.” Burliuk’s life-affirming energy, his creative force, and his celebration of the new – all left a lasting impact on the history of modernism.
Burliuk’s art and life after his tumultuous early period would take him to many and varied places. During the revolutionary years 1917-1920, he traveled to Siberia, where he gave Futurist concerts and sold his art. From 1920 to 1922 he spent time in Japan painting, organizing exhibitions, and promoting Futurism. Ihor Holubizky writes in the exhibition catalogue: “Japanese modernist art history . . . has attached much greater significance to his stay in Japan [than have Western accounts] and to the enthusiastic critical reception that he received there.” In 1922, Burliuk arrived in the United States, settling first in New York City, where he lived from 1922 to 1941, and then in Hampton Bays, Long Island (1941-1967).
The inspiration for Burliuk’s later career is found in his love of vitality in all its forms – biological, psychological, and cultural. Whether he was painting his native Ukrainian steppe, Japanese landscapes, Long Island fishing villages, or the streets of New York, he searched for the energy that vibrated and flowed through scenes. They suggest the existence of hidden patterns just beyond human perception.
“He was, in the end, a worshiper of the earth’s abundance and glory as much as a Futurist scandalizer of public taste,” notes Dr. Shkandrij. It is not surprising that one of his favorite artists was Vincent van Gogh, whose impassioned vision of nature, tendered with brilliant color and vigorous strokes, Burliuk admired greatly.
Burliuk’s deep involvement in the world also manifests itself in his important works focused on ideological, philosophical themes dealing with war and the human condition, an example of which is his 1944 painting Children of Stalingrad. According to Dr. Myroslava Mudrak, “Burliuk’s immigrant perspective on the working classes of the 1930s and 1940s in lower Manhattan offers a unique, and still largely unstudied, contribution to American Social Realism.”
Katherine S. Dreier, who along with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray founded the Sociétié Anonyme, found Burliuk the embodiment of the creative spirit. In her 1944 monograph on Burliuk she wrote of his “power of the dynamic creation … which burst all prisms.”
David Burliuk died on Long Island in 1967. That same year he was honored posthumously by being inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Examples of Burliuk’s work are in the collections of most major museums, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg; the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto. His works are also included in numerous private collections.
This exhibition follows a major show from the National Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv, Crossroads: Modernism in Ukraine, 1910-1930, shown at The Ukrainian Museum in 2006/2007, which included a work by Burliuk produced in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Museum
222 East 6th Street
New York, NY 10003
T: 212.228.0110
F: 212.228.1947
info@ukrainianmuseum.org
www.ukrainianmuseum.org
Museum hours:
Wednesday through Sunday
11:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
For Immediate Release
Press Contact: William Murray, 212.254.1357 or wilmurray@aol.com
15.10.2008 Matviy Vaisberg, landscapes «80х100»
 On October 16, 2008 the Tryptych gallery, Kyiv in association with art magazine Aura, is opening the exhibition entitled Landscapes «100х80» by Matviy Vaisberg. The series of works depicting non-translucent skies is an attempt by the artist to understand the time as the catastrophic surrounding of the human existence. The exhibition will continue through October 29, 2008. More information at www.triptych-gallery.org
08.10.2008 Alexander Archipenko exhibition
 As home to the estate of the sculptor Alexander Archipenko (Kyiv 1887 – New York 1964), the Saarlandmuseum possesses a collection of works unique in Europe, comprising original plasters, bronzes and drawings from one of the foremost pioneers of 20th century sculpture. Resorting essentially to its own works, the Saarlandmuseum will be staging, from October 2008, the most extensive retrospective of the works of Alexander Archipenko of recent decades.
The young Ukrainian settled in Paris in 1909. Like other progressive sculptors of his generation, Archipenko developed a strong interest in the sculpture of extra-European cultures, abundant examples of which were available for inspection at the Louvre and in the ethnological collections of the French capital.
At the same time, his work reflects contact with the formal experiments of the Cubists that took place at the beginning of the 20th century in Paris. Starting in his early works with the mighty, block-like proportions of the represented bodies, his figures became more expressively elongated from about 1912 onwards. Inventing highly contrived dynamic motifs, the sculptor engaged throughout his life in a playful and diversified exploration of the inherent laws of the static. With unprecedented radicalism, Archipenko invested the sculptural form with deliberately shaped voids and penetrations, initiating a new kind of dialogue between mass and space.
The works in Saarbrücken will be supplemented with international loans. Covering about 130 works from over five decades, the exhibition retraces the key lines of Archipenko’s development. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue and an extensive program of events. More information at Tel. +49 (0) 681.99 64-0 or online at www.saarlandmuseum.de
04.08.2008 Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky, publications
 Catalogue published for the personal exhibition in Kiev, 1940.
Editor G. Radionov; cover and design by O. Ruban; prepared to print by Y. Kolada and I. Volokidina; photos by I. Kasperovich.
300 copies published. Size 15.6x11.6cm. 92 pages. 18 black and white illustrations. List of works comprising paintings, drawings, architectural renderings, theatre and film design studies and works of decorative art – total of 1055 works on exhibit.
09.07.2008 RCS – Contemporary Russian Show
 The splendid Hermitage and grandiose Red Square tells Russia`s long history and great past. The Russian art performs as the fire frozen in the ice. Not even the most adventurous and optimistic art historian could have imagined such a success of the Russian contemporary art today. Inherited with the spirit of extension from the Slav people, the cultural toleration and art concept of the Russian contemporary art is absolutely no inferior to other European countries.
HAN JI YUN Contemporary Space [Beijing] invited nine Russian artists and art groups from all over the world and brought their works to China for the first time. In this thousand-square-meter space the quintessence of the Russian contemporary art is thoroughly revealed. Video, installation, oil painting, photography, depicted the inspirations of the artists jumping from the court of Peter the Great and the battlefield of Stalingrad to express a delightful elegance and humorous satires. They watch with their own eyes, feel with their own hearts, paint with their own hands, the Russian expression style is dignified with passion, and magnificent with grace.
Artists:
Anna Sokolova
Anton S. Kandinsky
Blue Noses
Evfrosina Lavrukhina
Petr Axenoff
Revision
Sergei Kiryuschenko
Tyminko & Mitrichenka
Curators:
Lioudmila Voropai & Han Jiyun
More information at www.hanjiyun.com
30.04.2008 Afrika (Sergei Bugaev)
Good ballerina is always right
 This is the fourth exhibition of Afrika at I-20 gallery. It presents an installation of a ship’s mast bearing three sail crowns. The installation is made out of stylish two-seat turn of the 19th century Siberian sleigh with flags and metal sheet representing the sails. The sheet is a door part removed by Afrika from the Vera Mukhina sculpture Worker and Kolkhoz Woman. It was removed during the Donald Destruction performance of 1987, Moscow. The flags were produced during the other performance that took place in Crimea and was entitled Krimania in 1995. In the concept of obsessional representation Afrika stayed for one month at the psychiatric clinic with aphasic (loss of comprehension of language) inmates. The inmates, insensitive to the hierarchy of linguistic elements, worked on the flags. The objective was to illustrate the collapse of the Soviet Union in the form of aphasic incoherence of post-Soviet traumatized consciousness. The art produced by both performances was utilized to produce the installation, now on exhibit at I-20 gallery.
Afrika (Sergei Bugaev) was born in Novorossisk in 1966. In the 1980s and 1990s, he founded with Timur Novikov the New Artists Movement in Leningrad. They also founded the Soviet band Popular Mechanics which was led by experimental composer Sergei Kurhokhin. In 1987 Bugaev starred in Serrgei Soloviov’s ASSA, one of the most significant Russian film of the Glasnost era; and in 1989, he was commissioned by John Cage to design sets and costumes for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s August Pace. Bugaev lives and works in St. Petersburg.
25.04.2008 New Ukrainian Painting
 On exhibit works by: Juri Solomko, Alexander Roitburg, Nikita Kadan, Ilya Chichkan, Andriy Sahaidakovsky, Maxim Mamsikov, Nikolai Matsenko, Lesya Khomenko, Konstantin Reunov, Vlada Ralko, Arsen Savadov, Sergei Zarva, Katya Solovieva, Vasily Tsagolov, Alexander Gnylitskiy, Pavel Makov.
Curated by Marat Guelman; organized by Juan Puntes.
Last in a White Box series exploring different methods of art production in Post-Soviet territories and Greater Russia begun in 2005 with Russia 2: Bad News from Russia, New Ukrainian Painting premiers a disparate group of artists – springing from the land of the great modernist painters Malevich, Rodchenko and Kandinsky – who after working in different media, resolved to return to painting as their instrument of artistic exploration and expression.
The latest rehabilitation of Ukrainian painting has taken place in the media age, inevitably reflecting on its mutated features. Dealing with post-colonial issues like transculturalism while maintaining the belief that cultural systems of exchange evolve, New Ukrainian painters are no longer constrained by outdated boundaries and regulations. While they remain faithful to the figurative and the narrative, postmodern appropriations of art history direct a trans-media flow of mixed screen and glossy-magazine manipulation.
The correlation seen in new Ukrainian painting of the modern context to the return to the “real” and the documentary is not simple abbreviation of the pre-media ages. The need to regain a grip on some “real reality” is more than just an alternative to the growing sensations of artificiality in today’s world and the virtualization of everyday life.
These Ukrainian painters express a sense of both liberation and anxiety. As the former institutions that once defined their identity have been challenged, they now explore what is to be Ukrainian today.
For more information visit: whiteboxny.org
04.04.2008 Odessa Artists of the second half of the 20th Century
 Come and enjoy the exhibition of non-conformist artists of Odessa on display at the Kyiv National Russian Art Museum, Tereshchenska St. 9; telephone 234-6218. Works by the following artists will be presented: V. Strelnikov, A.Atzmanchuk, K.Lomykin, Sviatoslav Bozhiy, D.M.Frumina, O.Sleshinskiy, G.Garmider and other. The exhibition is curated by Vyacheslav Vyrodov; foreword for the catalogue – Sergei Kniazev. To view the collection online please visit: http://slav-nonart.com
28.03.2008 Yuriy Savchenko
 Zorya Fine Art will host an exhibition of paintings by renowned Ukrainian artist Yuriy Savchenko.
The show is a retrospective of the artist’s work from the 1980s to 1990s, opens April 3 at the gallery, 38 E. Putnam Ave. Curated by Alexander Demko, the art will be on view through May 16.
Savchenko’s paintings are strong and evocative, yet their subject matter is very simple. His still lifes capture village roads, peasant life, birch trees, autumn and field flowers. They reflect the emotional attachment Savchenko has for ordinary scenes. The artist skillfully creates medium to large size oil paintings that are executed in heavy impasto. These works engage the viewer with laconic compositions and masterfully mixed colors that are contrasted with warm and cold tones.
Trained in an academic tradition, Savchenko graduated from the Kharkiv Academy of Art in 1957. He developed his own expressive yet impressionistic style in the early 1980s. American art lovers had the first opportunity to view his paintings in 1991, when he was invited to exhibit at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Alabama and at a private gallery in Nashville, Tenn. The last exhibition of works by Savchenko - “Fifth Avenue and Central Park” - was organized by the Ukrainian Institute of America, New York in 2004.
Now in his 70s, Savchenko continues his career, working in his studio in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Last year Savchenko held solo exhibitions in Kiev, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
For more information, log onto the web site www.zoryafineart.com or call the gallery 869-9898.
This article was published in The Arts section of Greenwich Time, Wednesday, March 26, 2008 – page A11.
03.12.2007 Ukrainian Artists in Paris - 1930
 In the 1930s a group of Ukrainian artists settled in Paris. They joined the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (ANUM) in 1932 and provided theirs works for the exhibition of the association that took place in Lviv in 1935. On the photographs, from the archives of Severyn Borachok, depicted from left to right: First row – Oleksa Tretiakiv, Severyn Borachok. Second row – Mykhailo Andreenko, Klement Redko, Mykola Glutchenko, Vasyl Yemetz, Vasyl Khmeluk, Oleksandr Lahutenko, Mykola Krychevsky, Volodymyr Savchenko-Belsky, Roman Turyn. Third row – Vasyl Perebyinis.
12.09.2007 A Meditation of Weapons
 A Meditation of Weapons >>>
Art by Anton Skorubsky Kandinsky >>>
Curated by Marc Eckō >>>
AMERICA IS WHERE THIS COLLECTION ENDS. >>>
However, this collection, and all of Anton Skorubsky Kandinsky’s work, begins in the former Soviet Union. It was there that Kandinsky used his Ukrainian lens to recast the regime of images propagated by Soviets. Today Anton presents us with (or confronts us with, depending on your vantage point) his articulation of the images of an America that found him.
When we first met, Anton said, “Marc? Teach me Pop culture!” My vibe was that he was out to emulate Warhol. But I soon came to realize his genius would be more like Borat. And so Anton offers us a mirror, juxtaposing the hard mechanical beauty of weapons with our bejeweled tabloid culture. But it is not an indictment. Thus we stand here, naked in the glory of our egos, and reflect on our truths. Smile on the good parts. Frown on the ugly. Begrudge the bits you can’t quite see.
As we approach the technological speed of light – thanks to the Internet – the measure of one’s 15 minutes of fame has slowed to near stand still. It seems even Andy’s maxim couldn’t stand the pressures applied by Moore’s law. Meanwhile, our understanding of the actual events of our day became an increasing abstraction, pacified in a diamond-encrusted-cocktail of media white noise and consumption hysteria.
It’s the process of his exploration that best embodies the essence of Anton’s pursuit. No limits. No ideologies. No masters to serve. Maniacally free. >>>
THIS COLLECTION IS WHERE AMERICA BEGINS. >>>
Marc Eckō
27.06.2007 RAIDER ATTACK ON ART GALLERIES IN KYIV
 Tonight, June 26 from 10:00pm to 1:00am, offices and gallery spaces of two Kyiv based galleries «Karas» and «Soviart» were seized by armed gangsters in a move to overtake the valuable space occupied by the gallery and the Association of Contemporary Ukrainian Art. Police and local government officials are not providing any support to the rightful business owners. We are looking for help. The galleries are located on Adriivsky Uzviz 22a. For more information and to provide your support please call us +38 044 2386531 or 4250247.
22.05.2007 Antiqvitas Nova
 Antiqvitas Nova. Monograph. Oleh Denysenko. (Paperback) by Oleh Sydor-Hibelynda (Foreword), Oleh Denysenko (Author), Oleh Dergachov, Orest Holubec, Yaryna Koval (Contributors), Olexiy Iutin (Art photographs), Oleh Denysenko (Concept and design), ColirPRO (Setting), Illya Levin, ColirPRO (Scanning), ColirPRO (Prepress), printed in Ukraine by Novyi druk, edition of 1500. Special thanks to co-editors: artfira.com and Sergei Brodovich Publishing /Издательство Сергея Бродовича/. All rights reserved©Olden Studio. Paperback: 160 pages Publisher: Olden Studio www.olden.com.ua (April 2007) Language: Ukrainian and English ISBN-13: 9789668527401 Product Dimensions: 30 x 23.5 x 1.5 cm / 11.8 x 9.25 x 0.6 inches Shipping Weight: 1 kg / 2.2 pounds. Available in the United States of America with artfira.com at $25 plus shipping. For more information please e-mail: mail@artfira.com or by phone: 917-573-5688.
07.04.2007 Works from the Estate of Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky
 New York, March 23, 2007. An exhibition entitled Works from the Estate of Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky will open at The Ukrainian Museum, 222 East 6th Street in New York City on April 13, 2007. The works – oil paintings and watercolors by the artist, are from the collection of Zorya Fine Art gallery in Greenwich CT. The exhibition will run through June 3, 2007.
Vasyl Krychevsky (1873 – 1952) is considered one of Ukraine`s outstanding public figures of the 20th century - architect, artist, scholar, and educator whose remarkable accomplishments impacted greatly on the country’s cultural development in the early part of the century. A Renaissance man in effect, he was dynamic and innovative in his creativity. He pioneered a distinct Ukrainian style of architectural expression and brought new trends to the art of book design. He made notable contributions to scholarship, to the applied arts, theater production designs, and was distinguished as an art director in the Ukrainian film industry.
As one of the principal organizers of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts in 1917 (later its name was changed to the Kyiv Art Institute), its first president and a professor on the staff, Krychevsky played a major role in educating a generation of exceptional Ukrainian architects and artists
Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky was a celebrated artist. The collection of his paintings from the Zorya Fine Art gallery is presented in a most timely fashion – to run concurrently with the critically acclaimed (The New York Times) exhibition Crossroads: Modernism in Ukraine, 1910-1930, presently on view at The Ukrainian Museum and showing until April 29th. Here, Krychevsky’s paintings can be viewed within the context of one of the most exciting and innovative periods of art in Ukraine – the period of modernism, which is so aptly discussed in the “Crossroads” exhibition. Krychevsky, along with such illustrious contemporaries as David Burliuk, Alexandra Exter, as well as fellow faculty members of the Ukrainian Academy of Art – artists Oleksander Bohomazov, Abram Manevych, Hryhorii Narbut, Vadym Meller, and Kazimir Malevich among others, represented the vibrant voices in the Ukrainian world of art of that day.
A 112-page exhibition catalogue in English and Ukrainian published by Zorya Fine Art contains a comprehensive essay on the life and work of Vasyl Krychevsky by Valentyna Ruban-Kravchenko, Doctor of Art History, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Fine Arts of Ukraine. Dr. Kravchenko divides the artist’s work represented in the show into “three thematic cycles”: paintings from before World War I and from the years before the start of World War II that project the natural beauty of Ukraine in compositions that embody joy and appreciation for the majesty of nature; works the artist created during his immigration period beginning with the final months of World War II, during which Krychevsky’s longing for his homeland is expressed poignantly in landscapes of Ukraine, which he painted from memory; and works in which the artist evokes Venezuela’s natural beauty and the urban environment of Caracas, where he lived the rest of his life and where he died in 1952.
In the essay, Dr. Kravchenko best describes the essence of Krychevsky’s paintings. “In both peaceful and difficult times, Krychevsky returned again and again to the images dearest to his heart – tree-hugged peasant homes above quiet-flowing Ukrainian rivers, the changing colors of the sky above the open spaces of green fields, the powerful surge of Crimean mountains, or the boundless blue of the sea. These small-scale harmonious works are monumental in their imagery, perfect in their composition and color scheme. In them, the artist’s soul sings like an Aeolian harp, open to the expanses and colors of his native land.”
Krychevsky was a very prolific artist. According to his biographer Vadym Pavlovsky, the artist “produced close to two hundred large paintings, several hundred of medium format, and several thousand small works.” Unfortunately, the bulk of his creative work was destroyed in a fire and only a small portion of his paintings are preserved in galleries, museums, and in private collections.
Krychevsky’s media was watercolor and oil. In describing the artist’s work, V. Pavlovsky said, “His paintings, full of sunlight and air, express the mood of the moment at which the artist captures nature and recreates it with his brush. The harmony of light and transparent hues, a joyous, rarely pensive mood, and a sense of intimacy are characteristic of almost all his landscapes.” Pavlovsky identifies Krychevsky’s style as that close to Impressionism, but says that the artist “followed his own path.”
Olha Hnateyko, President of the Board of Trustees of The Ukrainian Museum said that the Museum “is delighted to collaborate with Zorya Fine Art in displaying a selection of the vast artistic output of this distinguished artist, whose pioneering work in the name of Modernism helped change the face of Ukrainian culture in the early 20th century.”
The Ukrainian Museum’s purpose is to share the breadth and wealth of the Ukrainian culture with the public. To that end the Museum organizes exhibitions from its collections or from loans, offers educational programming, and works in concert with other museums, institutions and organizations to provide excellence in substance, visual enjoyment, and a learning experience in all its endeavors. In 2005 the Museum relocated to its newly built facility, funded in total by the generous donations from the Ukrainian community in the United States.
Exhibitions currently showing at The Ukrainian Museum:
Crossroads: Modernism in Ukraine 1910-1930 until April 29
Ukrainian Sculpture and Icons; A History of Their Rescue until May 27
Pysanka: Vessel of Life until July 1
The Ukrainian Museum
222 East 6th Street
New York, NY 10003
212-229-0100
info@ukrainianmuseum.org
www.ukrainianmuseum.org
29.03.2007 Grapheion
 Stredoevropska galerie a nakladatelstvi has reassumed its last year`s project and released another yearbook summarizing intresting events in the space of graphic art and printmaking in 2006. We would like to introduce Grapheion no. 19 to you. ------ LEADING ARTICLE Where is Print Going? (Richard Noyce, Wales) GRAPHEION‘S THEME A year of Rembrandt: Rembrandt and his prints (Martin Royalton-Kisch, British Museum, London); The history of the Rembrandt house; exhibitions guide WORLD TREASURES Print Collections in the Bibliotheque nationale de France FROM THE HISTORY OF GRAPHIC ART The Print Collection of Ferdinand Columbus (Mark P. McDonald, British Museum, London) CONTEMPORARY SCENE Franz Gertsch (Achim Gnann, Albertina, Vienna); Achille Perilli (Elisabetta Cristallini, Afredo Nicastri, Italy) 2006 TOP EXHIBITIONS Picasso – Painting Against Time (Albertina, Vienna); Eye on Europe (MoMA New York); Andy Warhol: Popstars (Albertina, Vienna); Kiki Smith (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis) THE WORK – THE PERSONALITY – THE TIME Vlastislav Hofman’s Prints 1884–1964 ART ASSOCIATIONS The Association of Czech Graphic Artists Hollar WORKSHOPS PaperGraphica, New Zealand; Tabor Presse, Berlin ART SCHOOLS Rorke’s Drift, Republic of South Africa; Printmaking in Malaysian Universities; Traditions reinterpreted in the Japanese hybrid INTERNATIONAL PERIODICALS Print Quarterly CHRONICLE Competitions, Exhibitions 2006 AUCTIONS ----- 152 full-colour pages on glossy paper, A4 format, perfect bound ----- price: EUR 11 or US$ 14 per piece + shipping postage EUR 10 or US$ 13.20 per piece
or overseas airmail postage US$ 15.30 per piece ----- Grapheion, international review of contemporary prints, books and paper art has been published by the Central Europe Gallery and Publishing House in Prague, Czech Republic. This magazine comes out in Czech [ISSN 1211-6890] and English versions [ISSN 1211-6904] in A4 format on glossy paper. A single issue contains usually 88 full-colour pages, a double-issue 172 pages.
This magazine was released quarterly from 1997 to 2000 [issues nos. 0–16]. There was one special issue in 2002 [no. 17]. We made a 2005 yearbook [no. 18] and a 2006 yearbook [no. 19] covering the most interesting events in the field of printmaking.
----- www.grapheion.cz
06.01.2007 Alexis Gritchenko (1883-1977)
 The late works of the great masters have always had an air of liberty and maturity which dominated the world around them. They sum up and express the life of those endowed with a superior sensitiveness. This can be seen in the last productions of Titian, Rembrandt and Greco as well as in the music of Beethoven and Wagner.
We find something similar in the paintings of Alexis Gritchenko, which were executed since the last war. Gritchenko, who is now eighty years of age, has continued to develop his art and to maintain his vigorous style, in which he has so admirably depicted the tumultuous aspects of nature. Throughout a variety of countries this “vagabond of Ukrainia” as he calls himself, has drawn inspiration from the vast open spaces of the plain; from the geological forms of great mountains ranges; from the rhythmic movement of the great waters; from the changing shape of the clouds in their perpetual drift from one season to another, and from the vegetation that is constantly springing up into life.
Having never lost his youthful memories of the endless plains of the Dnieper, nor the flavour of the Slavonic earth to which he was always attached, Gritchenko with his extraordinary vitality never lived the nostalgic life of a refugee. He has a fraternal feeling for all the countries he has visited. In France he is in every respect at home, and he has also assimilated the natural beauties and the human characteristics of Greece, Spain, Italy as well as several of the eastern and northern lands. Born in the old world, he nevertheless succeeded in conquering the new. Welcomed by the USA in 1958, a Gritchenko Foundation was eventually set up there, to contain his paintings and writings where they await the time when someday they may return to his native land.
His art which is profoundly rooted in Russia is nevertheless remarkably universal in its appeal. He loves the Russian Icons of which he is a connoisseur, and has studied them attentively and retained something of their sumptuous colours, their ample and majestic style. He is too much of a painter to remain shut up in any of the historic styles, as is often the case with some of his countrymen. Abandoning his early oriental manner which he once defined as “flat surfaces, reversed perspectives, in a light immaterial style” he assimilated all the modern movements in Western art, the vivid chromatic style of the Fauves, the constructive architecture of Cubists, from these he took what was useful to him for his own lyrical vision of life, without being absorbed by them.
The intense blues of his mountains ranges are crystallizations of the earth, transformed by the atmosphere. From upright forms he evokes the mystical interior of a cathedral, where Faith floats high up above the miniature human figure. A worldwind of forms, which would, to-day, be called “gestual” evokes the powerful winds that blow through most of his paintings.
Even the houses, such as those of the Basque country with great red roofs, or those of Corsica and Spain huddled together in a solid mass; ships with bellowing sails, or peasants going about their daily work, seen along with all the other features which make up the immense play of life, the fragility of which, like vegetation, covers the rough surface of the globe.
The still-lives of Gritchenko are very much alive. They consist of common objects, of fiery-coloured flowers, especially wild flowers discovered in Provence or Limusin and gathered by the artist, or sea produce, ursins, shrimps, starfishes and lobsters of strange forms for which he has a strong predilection. In all of these one finds a continual strain of warm palpitating colour, powerful and all inclusive like nature itself. Before these sumptuous works one recalls the art of Rubens or Delacroix, or a phrase of Virgil or Baudelaire who also felt and evoked the inner soul of things.
In this way, Gritchenko painting goes far beyond the shallow researches and the pretentious simplifications of a purely intellectual order which os many of our contemporaries imageine to be new. Gritchenko’s art is united to the earth in a mystic marriage where all the sentiments and sensations take fire and invite us to share in a healthy joyful existence which the narrow utilitarian nature of modern life excludes. Invincible in its reaction to the social and technical sclerosis of our time, Gritchenko has rediscovered the real vocation of art which is to make humanity conscious of its greatness and high standing in the cosmos.
26.09.2006 Upcoming auctions to watch
 Auctions to watch this season
>>> Sotheby’s
The Russian Sale
28 Nov 06, London, New Bond Street
Sale L06111
>>> Christie’s
Russian Works of Art
29 Nov 06, London, King Street
>>> Bukowskis
International Autumn Auction
12 – 13 Dec 06, Helsinki
Sale 132
>>> Bonhams
Russian Sale
27 Nov 06, London, New Bond Street
Sale 14219
>>> MacDougall’s
Russian Art Auction
27 Nov 2006, London, St. James`s Square
>>> Boisgirard
Russian Painters
11 Oct 2006, Paris, Drouot Richelieu
(correction – moved to 20 Oct 2006)
>>> Tajan
Russian Art
21 Dec 2006, Paris, Espace Tajan
Sale 6663
Auction results will be published on artfira.com
For additional information please contact us at mail@artfira.com or by phone at 917 459 3248.
27.03.2006 “Eurointegration through Art”
- ARS DOR Association with the support of the International Fund for the Promotion
of Culture (UNESCO) invites visual artists* from Romania, Ukraine and Moldova to
participate at the International Art Campus
”Eurointegration through Art” that will take place in Moldova, during June 14 –
20, 2006.
Only 18 artists will be selected to become Ambassadors for Eurointegration through
art. They will express their vision on importance of culture in the International
Diplomacy process of Eurointegration.
During the international art camp two seminars will be delivered to participants:
“Eurointegration through art”
“Art promotion through Internet”
At the end of Art Campus painters will exhibit their artworks in the National
History Museum of Moldova. Later exhibition will be presented in other European
countries. Also exhibition will be placed online for one year what will make your
works easily searchable on the Internet.
Organizers will cover living expenses, meals and partially painting materials.
Participants will cover travel expenses to/from Moldova. Participation fee is: 20
USD.
Eligibility and Submission criteria
· Artists from Romania, Ukraine, Moldova*, 18-35 years old
· Motivation Letter
· Artist CV (or resume) with contact details (may be presented in English,
Romanian or Russian)
· 5 artwork photos 10x15 cm, of professional quality, without dust or
scratches, or CD-ROM (with artist’s name, title of work, medium, size, year)
All materials for application must be sent to the address: ARS DOR Association,
of. 109, 59/1 Calea Esilor str., Chisinau, MD 2069, Moldova. Materials can also be
submitted electronically to: ghenador@yahoo.com (with images as jpegs).
Applications for ”Eurointegration through Art” will be reviewed by ARS DOR
selection committee. Only accepted artists will be announced.
Calendar Dates
May 15, 2006 Application deadline
May 31, 2006 Accepted artists informed
June 14 - 20, 2006 International Art Campus
June 20 - July 15, 2006 Exhibition in the National
History Museum of Moldova
June 20, 2006 - June 20, 2007 Exhibition continues online
*Visual artist from countries different from Romania, Ukraine and Moldova can also
apply, with their own support of campus expenses.
If you would like to be a part of this adventure, do not hesitate to contact us.
For further information please contact:
ARS DOR Association
of. 109, 59/1 Calea Esilor str.
Chisinau, MD 2069, Moldova
Phone: +373 79574875; +373 22 759413
E-mail: ghenador@yahoo.com
Web: www.ghenador.com
14.03.2006 Picasso, Warhol Top List of 2005`s Actively Traded Artists
 By Linda Sandler
March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Pablo Picasso, who painted the
world`s most expensive picture, held his place as 2005`s most
actively traded artist, and Andy Warhol bumped Claude Monet from
No. 2, said Artprice.com, a French data service. Canaletto`s
Venetian views propelled him to fourth place from 239th.
Picasso collectors raised $153.2 million last year from
1,409 works sold at auction, Artprice said. Owners of Warhols
realized $86.7 million from 660 images, while 22 Monets took
$61.5 million and 18 Canalettos $55.5 million, it said.
Auction volumes are a guide to which works are becoming more
liquid or expensive and which may be harder to buy and sell over
time. Three Chinese painters, including Zao Wou-Ki, born in 1921,
jumped onto Artprice`s top 50 as Christie`s International and
Sotheby`s Holdings Inc. expanded Asian auctions. Henri Matisse fell
to 13th from sixth as his best bright-patterned works became scarcer.
Artprice published its ranking of artists by auction volume
on its Web site as part of a survey of market trends in 2005.
Fine-art auctions last year raised $4.2 billion, an increase
of 15 percent from 2004, as the hammer came down on 477 lots
priced at $1 million or more. Artprice excludes cars, furniture
and collectibles that make up $2 billion of auction sales. About
a third of fine-art lots failed to sell in 2005, including
Monet`s ``Waterloo Bridge,`` valued at as much as $6 million.
New York, where the billionaire Eli Broad paid $23.8 million
for David Smith`s ``Cubi XXVIII`` sculpture at Sotheby`s in
November, was expensive in 2005. Values swelled 35 percent in the
biggest market. Art prices in London increased 4.8 percent.
New York Gains
The U.S. was catching up with an earlier surge in the No.2
market, Artprice said. From 2002 to 2004, London auction prices
shot up 87 percent, dwarfing New York`s gains of 28 percent.
Prices in Paris, the No. 3 market, were little changed last year.
For Hong Kong, which has overtaken Germany to become the
fourth-largest market, Artprice said there`s insufficient monthly
data to provide comparable numbers. However, China`s economic boom
propelled indexes of the country`s contemporary artists and old
masters about 80 percent higher at auctions worldwide, it said.
Fine-art auction prices worldwide last year rose 10 percent,
slowing from a 19 percent run-up in 2004.
The hottest art movement in 2005 was Dada, an early-20th
century group whose best-known work is Marcel Duchamp`s urinal,
``Fountain.`` An Artprice index of Dada works rose 137 percent.
Italian futurists including Gino Severini added 93 percent.
London Bombings
New York took a 44 percent share of fine-art auctions.
London`s auction totals swelled by one fifth, giving the U.K.
capital 28 percent of the pie. A Canaletto painting of Venice
took $32.6 million in a packed Sotheby`s London auction room
after a day of bombings on July 7, making the 18th-century
Italian artist the most expensive of the year.
Hong Kong, which contributed more of Christie`s 2005 auction
totals than Paris, had a 3.7 percent market share, while Paris
took 6.6 percent.
Publicly traded Artprice has headquarters in Saint-Romain-
au-Mont-d`Or, France.
*T
Here are Artprice`s 10 most actively traded artists:
Pablo Picasso
Andy Warhol
Claude Monet
Canaletto
Mark Rothko
Marc Chagall
Willem de Kooning
Fernand Leger
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Lucian Freud
*T
19.01.2006 JANUARY 19-28, 2006
 CURATED BY LISA PAUL STREITFELD . WITH VINCENT BALDASSANO. MIKE BIDLO. ABRAHAM BREWSTER. LAUREL JAY CARPENTER . ARTURO CUENCA . RICHARD HUMANN . BAPTISTE IBAR . ANTON KORUBSKY KANDINSKY . MARNI KOTAK . PETER KREBS . YULIYA LANINA . D. DOMINICK LOMBARDI ABRAHAM LUBELSKI . RANAN LURIE . SOPHIE MATISSE . REUBEN NAKIAN . OLU OGUIBE KEVIN ROBINSON. GAE SAVANNAH. DONNA SHARRETT. ANITA STECKEL. MARGARET TSIRANTONAKIS. SUSAN WEINREICH. FRED WILSON. MYKOLA ZHURAVEL.
Icons of the 21st Century presents a new movement in which contemporary artists explore the forms of the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage of the opposites. The exhibition seeks to extend the dialogue between Wolfgang Pauli and C.G. Jung, who believed this emerging archetype to be the icon of the 21st century.
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