The art project “Yordan” (“Jordan, Epiphany”), consisting of about 30 works by Petro Bevza, is being exhibited at the Andrei Sheptytsky National Museum. Khrystyna HORYN, the museum’s exhibition organizer, told The Day that “Yordan” reflects the artist’s 20-year-long multifaceted search. Yet it is not a retrospective show of Bevza’s oeuvre. Rather, it is the artist’s attempt to implement his main paradigm indicated in the “Manifesto” to the art project “Crossover” (1997-2005): “We are balancing between the two opposite worlds – the virtual world of information and the environment. Our way is to search for equilibrium. Our goal is to intersperse the language of contemporary fine arts with Ukrainisms.”
Petro Bevza, 54, lives and works in Vyshneve near Kyiv. He received an artistic education at the Kyiv Art Institute. A member of the National Union of Ukrainian Artists, Bevza has won several awards for the best painting work. Among them is the prize he was given at a young age in 1994 in Kyiv, as well as the awards of the International Contemporary Art Salon (Nice, France), the International Art Festival in Kyiv, the Soviart Contemporary Art Center (Kyiv), the Pro Helvetia Swiss cultural foundation, etc. He works as painter and sculptor in the genre of land art.
“Petro Bevza is an intellectual,” says Ihor KOZHAN, director general of the Andrei Sheptytsky National Museum. “He is a thinking artist. His works are deeply philosophical, they prompt one to think and perceive the world a bit different than it really is. Bevza’s pictures are not totally abstract. His canvases are profoundly philosophical and commonplace at the same time – in other words, the artist combines elements of abstraction, moments of reality, and the ancient ethnic Ukrainian image. In his works, Bevza is not somewhere in outer space, outside the realities. His realities derive from the surrounding nature, city, and people.”
In Kozhan’s view, it is important that the artist never stops at what he has achieved – he is developing his talent. “Petro has a great potential, so his best is still in the offing,” Kozhan says.
The artist himself notes that “the exalted and sacred can only open through complicated dramatic symbols or ascetic practices – it is always near you, and you only need to wish to feel its reality in order to change yourself.”
It will be recalled that “Yordan” has already been exhibited in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Odesa. The exhibit was also shown in the US (Ukrainian Institute, New York). It is now the turn of Leopolitans to see it. Petro Bevza’s art project “Yordan” will be on display until March 29.
