Kyiv is not exactly New York when it comes to art galleries but you can find a few interesting places to modernize your weekend.
Textile artist Valentyna Royenko, a.k.a. VALYA , spent the last 10 years in California creating unique works from silk and thick felt. Thinking of the American obsession with plastic surgery, VALYA created a five-meter high image of an old woman from felt. Her white wrinkles are painted on the wall opposite to the one where it hangs, creating a visual effect of reflection. “Everything But Memory” is an exhibition that implies change in everything, including physical appearance. Memory, however, is the only thing that stays the same.
Tseh Gallery, 69 Frunze, 351-1450, zeh.com.ua, until Dec. 24
Annoyed by the reality he sees in photographs, Oleksandr Lyapin decided to give his old images a new look. Together with 12 Ukrainian artists, he first photoshopped them and then created a whole new layer using regular and felt-tip pens and brushes. Calling the exhibition “Kill the photography,” Lyapin said he wanted to switch off the gloom reality in reportage photos by meddling with the image.
Ya Gallery on Horyva, 49B Horyva St., 492-9203, www.yagallery.com.ua, until Jan. 11 (closed Sundays)
Bottega Gallery invites to escape the reality into the imaginary world of 12 artists. In “Where Fantasies Can Take You,” they implement their unconscious desires into paintings and sculptures. To leave your mark in this phantasmagoria, you’re encouraged to leave an anonymous comment in a guest book, telling about your own world of dreams.
Bottega gallery, 22B Mykhaylivska St., 279-5353, www.bottega-gallery.com, until Dec. 16 (closed Sundays and Mondays)
Let the holiday season begin! A collection of hand-made dolls and Christmas decorations is on display in Parsuna gallery. Check out hand-made Christmas angels, Father Frost and a Snow Maiden, glittering trees, cuddly animals, ballet dancers, princesses and clowns. “Toys for the Prince” exhibition is what you need to warm the spirit and empty the wallet in time for the holidays. Some dolls and decorations are for sale.
Parsuna Gallery, 43 Horyva, 425-2415, (097) 494-0865, www.parsuna.com.ua, from Dec. 8
In the center of Kyiv, there is a derelict house: all communal services are out of order, ceilings, floors and walls are cracked and rotten and may fall apart at any moment. But its residents are not moving out because they have nowhere else to go. They have been appealing to city authorities for 20 years but to no avail. Photographer Yevgenia Belorusets spent three years taking pictures and interviewing the residents to raise a curtain on the housing crisis on 32 Gogolivska St. British Guardian paper took notice and awarded Belorusets for her work. We wonder who’s going to help the squatters.
Visual Culture Research Center at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, 2 Skovorody St., www.vcrc.ukma.kiev.ua/en, until Dec. 22
Black and white photographs of a burned down forest seem almost like graphics.
Lesya Malska captured on camera what’s left from the wildfires. Her images look almost like mathematical drawings of something other than black stumps and scorched earth. Surveying the subject of alienation, the artist calls on people to wake up to nature and look after it.
The Small Gallery of Mystetsky Arsenal, Lavrska 12, 288-5140, www.artarsenal.in.ua, until Dec. 19
The work of Matviy Vaysberg is honored in the retrospective exhibition “Fragments of time.” The gallery covers 25 years of his creative pass as a painter, graphic artist and book designer. He illustrated books of such authors as Sholem Aleichem, José Ortega y Gasset, Carl Jung, Soren Kierkegaard and Fedor Dostoyevsky.
His every scenic loop is an excursion into the history of art and literature.
Dukat Gallery, 4 Grushevskogo St., 278-8410, www.dukat.in.ua, until Dec. 26
“Illumination” art project unites 11 young artists, who work in completely different techniques, from oil paintings to video installations. Oleksiy Khoroshko and Sergiy Petlyura will put big, post-Soviet checkered, shopping bags at the entrance. Andriy Sidorenko will reconstruct a pebbly beach, with towels, changing rooms and videos of the sea shore. Mykhailo Barabash will create a sculpture of a man from flowers. Art work made by gifted orphans will be displayed as part of this exhibition.
The institute of problems of modern art, 18D Schorsa St., 529-2051,529-20-51, until Dec. 30
