Oleh Yaseniev is often called Ukrainian Modigliani. Although the artist himself considers the French modernist an undeniable genius, he does not like this kind of comparisons very much. Yet he confesses that he has French genes. Yaseniev’s mother was born in France and taught French in Kharkiv’s higher educational institutions for a long time. Then she moved to her husband’s place, the village of Dniprovka, Zaporizhia oblast. Oleh was born there in 1963. He studied at the Dnipropetrovsk Art School as well as the National Academy of Fine Arts where he also did a Ph.D. course and has been teaching since 1996. He is a member of the National League of Artists and a Merited Painter of Ukraine. Yaseniev’s canvases can be found today in the collections of Ukraine, Belarus, Slovakia, the Vatican, France, and the US.
“Oleh Yaseniev’s composition is always simple and easy to understand. It shows the right choice of a highly-refined style that resembles classicism. The background entwines with linear Rococo scrolls and happy extravagances of the form. Yaseniev’s canvases are almost always monochromic. Only in some details do they show an emphasized color. We have seen Oleh as a lyrical painter before. His ‘Bamboo Wind’ is something different. It is road signs of sorts, a philosophical reflection on a short (by the Universe’s yardstick) human life,” art researcher Olena VALKO comments to The Day.
Indeed, at the exhibit now showing at the Triptych Art gallery, the well-known Kyiv artist displays himself in a new, untypical for him, art line.
“The noise of a bamboo wind is like a Buddhist monk’s never-ending song… The time has stopped for a hundredth’s part of a second – all we have is a never-ending [musical] note. The entire world has become this note. You can hear and feel it, and you yourself are this very note. It is an exit to a different dimension – a door that leads to something unknown,” Oleh Yasenev says, explaining his artistic concept.
“Entrance or Exit” – another name of this exhibit – is a question to which everybody has an answer of their own. You can look for your answer at Triptych Art (10, Desiatynna St.) until August 28.
