Viktor Medvediev, one of Kyiv’s most prolific creative personalities, thought up a very long and pretentious name for his new personal exhibition — From the Life of a Swallowtail, or How I Spent My Summer. The show consists of watercolors painted, by all accounts, in the past few months.
Medvediev is an individual who enjoys life in all its dimensions — from the utterly comical (“In the Sky,” “Under Water,” “Light and Shadows”) to the most private moments (“A Grasshopper Lurked in the Grass,” “The Life of a Swallowtail” diptych). What equally leads to happiness is “Morning,” “Evening,” the changing seasons (even if it is “Autumn Around the Corner,” a traditional excuse for melancholia), and a beauty who flashed by in a split second (“Running from the Rain”). All this becomes the theme and plot of fiery, juicy, and exquisite watercolors. The artist seems to be somewhat overdoing his joyfulness: he even named his a bit encrypted self-portrait “I Feel Good!”
Anyway, it is no accident that Medvediev’s watercolors and, moreover, the exhibition’s title should feature the swallowtail. It is, of course, fine when optimism turns into hedonism, but still there is some “butterfly spirit,”, an equal degree of lightness of mind and the ephemeral, in all those pretty running girls and multicolored insects. And, sadly, this is not the organic nature of Viktor Medvediev. This is an acquired nature. His flowers and grasshoppers form a deliberately- built ornamental covering. Covering what?
