Modernity has given us no shortage of teachers telling us what to see and how to look at it.
Television, billboards, magazines and websites – all package the world and our own lives neatly and clearly without us having to use our own imagination.
The exhibition “What Fantasy May Come” at the Bottega Gallery, which opened on Dec. 3, is an attempt to encourage us not to lose the ability to dream and imagine.
The collection brings together work by 12 Ukrainian artists, which, according to curator Maryna Shcherbenko, not only allows the viewer “to reflect on the ideas presented” through the artists’ eyes, but also “challenge [him] to imagine.”
There’s a variety of media and art approaches on show, from computer technology in Oleksiy Sai’s colorful and intricate composition of Excel diagrams and graphs, to vintage-style ceramic tiles painted with stereotypical images of England by Olena Blank.
Hlib Vysheslavsky provides an unusual view of Paris in his series of black-and-white photographs “Through the eyes of the artist.”
A glass sculpture of a woman struggling to break free by Kateryna Hanchak.
Two tiled rooftops cut across and obscure the top of a typical French house, barely poking its head into view in the background.
The focus of the picture seems to fall on the second roof, with the house distant and the first roof too close and blurred.
Vysheslavsky said he was using random landscape shots to capture parts of the city, inspired by the 20th-century American artist Edward Hopper.
Hopper painted urban architecture and cityscapes, especially the roofs of old buildings, using sharp lines and large shapes to capture the loneliness of a megalopolis.
Lviv artist Kateryna Hanchak uses “hutne sklo,” a free-blowing glass technique, to create expressive works without ornamentation.
Her “Open you cage!” is a woman bent backward and straining upward trying to break free from her stand, from her own form.
Hanchak says she wants people to reflect on imposed values and realize and appreciate their own will and aims.
Oil painting ‘Strawberry Hilled Bridge’ by Valeria Trubina.
Other works try to create a space for the viewer to think. Valeria Trubina’s oil painting “Strawberry Hilled Bridge” from her “Mysterious gardens” series depicts an unreal, fairy-tale landscape with an unusual color scheme – a reddish lake and whitish, almost transparent bridge – which give it a dream-like feel.
“I try to create places where everybody is able to come and stay for a while to have a rest or just to observe their minds,” said Trubina.
What makes this exhibition interesting is the dialog between the viewer and the work, and between the viewer and the artist.
Nothing is packaged for consumption – instead you are invited, challenged to engage parts of the brain that much of modern life encourages you to shut down.
Kyiv Post staff writer Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected].
