Kyiv’s ARTEast Gallery at 13 Reitarska Street is in its fourth year. At the turn of the twentieth century, the premises were rented for ballet classes and the Terpsichorean spirit is still there. Now the gallery features an exhibit called Kyiv Baroque by noted Kyiv artist Olena Pryduvalova. Her works use various techniques: gouache on paper, dolls made of natural fabrics and bands, small wood chests handmade and decorated by the author with utmost inspiration. Her works have been repeatedly exhibited in various Kyiv galleries as well as in North America, the Czech Republic, and Greece. And the geography of museum and private collections with her works is striking.
This time Olena invites the viewer to a wonderland of dolls wearing traditional Podillia costumes. Such dolls were once made by Malevych. Now they look like mute yet very expressive personae filling the gallery hall, the walls hung with harmoniously displayed gouaches portraying various parts of Kyiv seen at different angles. “Kyiv is the main theme: portraits of streets, buildings, arches, lanes, caryatids, and chiaroscuro,” says the artist.
A graduate of Kyiv’s Institute of Art, Olena Pryduvalova is a prizewinner of the Prominent Creative Personalities of Ukraine exhibits (starting with a diploma of honor and the first prize in 1998). The current exposition, lasting to June 21, arrests one’s eye with its inanimate handmade works of art that seem very much alive, each with its soul. Her caryatids, represented in several works, least of all look like dead molds. Somehow they respond to everything around them. Who are these caryatids? Caryatids at a boulevard, in a night street, on a Catholic belfry. Frozen forms seem to move toward the environs. Such is the artist’s sincere admiration of her native city, he nonstandard vision of cityscapes.
Experts tend to regard Pryduvalova’s art as modern on the one hand and primitive on the other. In any case, her ingenuousness is embodied in her works, a sure way to win the viewer’s heart. Looking at familiar streets and places, we perceive this city in a new dimension bestowed on us by the author’s imagination. A graphic example is Olena’s Red Trees. The coloration has the effect of a Kyiv street seen through a magic colored glass.
Visitors can also explore her etchings. The exposition is built so as to glimpse the artist’s rich talent, offering an enviable diversity of subjects and techniques, ranging from a touch of Ukrainian folklore to pensive and conceptually whimsical paintings. Despite the exhibition hall’s limited area, the impression is of a vast space occupied by every item on display. You see the cheerful colors of Podillia, with dolls hanging from the ceiling, taking in everything happening around them. The pictures on the wall warm your heart with fresh invigorating colors. It is especially interesting to guess the baroque touch hidden and creatively revised in her works, prompted by the very title of the exposition.
