Can we talk heart to heart in the hustle and bustle of city streets? We can, if we are on Andriyivsky uzviz. Everything is unusual here and your heart-to-heart can be wordless, conveyed to an artist’s canvas or a sheet of paper. Those exploring an exposition titled Vita (meaning life) at the Honchary Art Salon are left with precisely this impression.
Viktoriya Denbnovetska, a renowned Kyiv artist, called her exposition Vita because it is the diminutive of her first name and because she wanted to broach the subject of life in her works. Perhaps we all think about things we consider most important for ourselves and for the world now that we are stepping into the third millennium. The artist’s talent helps transform these thoughts and feelings into a variety of forms, ranging from collage to prints to pictures, using mixed techniques. Compositions without a definite subject are like one’s inner voice heard in a whisper (like A Prayer or A Look from Inside ) or as a loud song (Symphony No. 40, Summer or Road). It is interesting to watch the idea of the Great Beginning implemented in her composition Grain. Two semiovals that compliment each other, making up a single whole, unstable, secreting a possibility of repeated reproduction. The light golden palette inspires one with the hope that thus will begin another golden age. A closer look, however, shows that the radiance comes from nothing more than ordinary wood chips. One is reminded of Boris Okudzhava [a popular nonconformist Soviet bard of the 1960s-80s — Ed.] who said that inimitable music is born “of a piece of wood and some crude strands.”
Exploring her works fills one with many interesting associations. Viktoriya Denbnovetska is a charming woman teaching at the Ukrainian Art Academy (many students must be secretly in love with her). Moralizing is not for her. She carefully explores the surrounding world, experimenting, looking for something new, drawing into her creative whirlpool all who want to enter.
