On the one hand, a common thing in Mystetsky Arsenal, many showcased works are commercial, decorative in the worst meaning of the word. On the other hand, the exhibit includes a number of well-thought, conceptually reasoned exposition projects, which is quite a rare quality.
The Salon’s main event, the project of British-Israeli artist Zadok Ben-David “Simple Lines,” is a cross between decorativeness and conceptuality.
The project consists of three parts. The most famous one is “Evolution and Theory” (1999), which includes 150 black latticed sculptures made of aluminum, which were created based on the illustrations to the world periodicals and textbooks of the 19th century (experiments with current, gravitation, speed, and anatomic research). The statues of primates and early representative of the Homo sapiens species stand among these plots – they were copied as well from the pictures in Biology textbooks.
Ben-David’s second work, “Blackfield” (2008-12, steel covered with paint) consists of 17,000 miniature metal plants covered with acid engraving. Various versions of the installations have been showcased in Great Britain, Portugal, Australia, Singapore, Germany, South Korea, and the US.
A source of inspiration for the author are illustrations from the encyclopedia of the Victorian time, books from European monasteries and Muslim medic treatises, as well as botanic pictures of the masters of Northern Renaissance. Each of these flat miniature sculptures has two sides: it is colored on the one side, and black on the other. The effect produced is really impressive: the lawn, at first sight filled with half-fantastic plants, suddenly flashes with all colors of rainbow if you look from a different angle.
Finally, “Black Flowers” (2010-12, aluminum covered with paint) is a reproduction of the “Blackfield,” 52 enlarged pictures of sculptures based again on the illustrations to botany articles in encyclopedias. Each of the flowers, scrupulously worked out in detail, has an artificial silver shade. According to Ben-David, “Black Flowers” poeticize science and are a metaphor for human life experience.
All statues are anchored to sand. They are showcased in a white box with bright illumination, so at first it seems that they are paintings. Only in the movement one can see it is a three-dimension installation.
Certainly, if one wishes it is possible to add numerous interpretations to the compositions, which is formally so perfect. But in the end result, “Simple Lines” is a decoration, however very beautiful and impressing. The bits of meanings scattered over the openwork contours do not gather into one semantic focus. The refined post-modernist catalogue remains a set of illustrations, not stitched with a single message.
In spite of that the participation of Zadok Ben-David is without doubt a success of the Salon. For in the end of The Day our audience and artists have to see with their own eyes the world samples of different genres. Ben-David brings even decoration to an impressively high level.
Nearly 50 Ukrainian artists are taking part in the Salon. The most interesting is the project part, where the items of the exhibition space are placed according to some piercing idea. At the same time, the works alone may not be very interesting apart from this context. For example, the project “New Perspective” (Pavlo Kerestei, Mykola Matsenko, Roman Piatkovka, Viktor Sydorenko, Anton Solomukha, and Oleh Tistol) has the prevailing number of garden gnome’s statues, but you reveal them when you come along a kind of a labyrinth.
The best things start in the second part of the Salon, after the “New Perspective” the abundance of commercial works gives way to several authors’ halls. For example, Dobrynia Ivanov and Vasyl Tatarsky built in their box an almost ideal in its laconism sculpture phrase: four similar metal squares on the wall and a dark hieroglyph statue closer to the entrance: everything is exact, no unnecessary things.
Mykola Malyshko took the hall, which hosted during the Kyiv biennale a huge installation of the Chinese artist, who worked with all kinds of rubbish and old things his mother had accumulated for several years. It seems the previous exhibit has not been removed completely and Malyshko decided to use it. His project “Here and now” is based on simple combinations. Trivial things, a set of clothes on clothes hanger, several buckets or bowls, or a worn out carpet, or squeaking wooden chairs, with the author’s sculpture and accompanying text nearby. In other words, Malyshko’s sculptures are living in people’s routine space, replacing the people.
Oleksandr Sukholit’s project has a simple title: “A Workshop.” At Oleksandr’s insistence the light in the hall was dimmed, so the hasty audience that comes to the Salon just for records, does not stop here. But this hall is worth spending your time. Sukholit has indeed reproduced the atmosphere of a studio: empty pedestals, works, not prepared for exhibiting or hidden in half-darkness, showcasing even the framework for the future clay figures – and it turned out that these wire creations are wonderful sculptures themselves. There are also watercolors and graphics, stone and bronze – the full-fledged oeuvre of one of the best artists of Ukraine.
The masterful twilight is contrasted by the next room with wooden works by the Iran-born resident of Kharkiv Saeid Ahmadi (the cycle “Open Sky”) and another Kharkivite Valerii Pirohov. Pirohov is more inclined to naive art, some kind of childishness and romance, whereas Ahmadi’s romanticism is more melancholic and deep. The similarity and contrast between these two sculptors create a separate plot of this part of the exposition.
The Kharkiv line of the Salon is decently continued by Oleksandr Ridny – along with Sukholit he is one of the legends of the 1990s generation. After a long break his works come as a joy and a surprise at the same time. The latter is caused by the apparent influence of Latin American People’s Sculpture. The project “Properties” shows statues of big animals and monsters of various calibers, frightening and comic at the same time, which resembles the style of the ritual statues of various South American religious cults.
In the project “Salantai” the ceramic sculptures by Andrii Ilyinsky are combined with video forms by Oleksandr Dirdovsky (sometimes the monitor is placed just in the middle of the sculpture), and the last hall of the Salon is full of the sculptures of horses, painted by different artists, with real branches, parts of greensward, living plants, apples in baskets, and sofas without framework. This room smelling of musty leaves and apples, an atmosphere of a sculpture park, is truly a present for the audience.
Mystetsky Arsenal has held larger and richer projects, but namely this year’s Sculpture Salon has become (with a number of exceptions) by far the best event namely in terms of well-reasoned organization, which proves once again, how important is the work of a curator in this space. Hopefully, the following undertakings will take this achievement as a norm.
