A tall stately gentleman, who my friends say resembles Dumas’ musketeer Porthos, is standing embarrassed over warm words from his kindred spirits – this is the way Volodymyr Kabachenko looked at the opening of his exhibit. The artist brought his canvases to Kyiv’s connoisseurs of painting from “Southern Palmyra.”
The exhibit displays about two dozens of pictures painted in various periods – from the early 1990s to this day, including the canvas Autumnal Sunflowers. The Wheels of Time. Kabachenko decided to gift a picture, which portrays Taras Shevchenko and bears his quote “To the dead and the living…,” to the museum.
The artist’s canvases are free of characteristic postmodern irony. Kabachenko continues the traditions of Ukrainian baroque, art nouveau, and avant-garde. The Odesa artist’s works are based on mythical and poetic outlook through which the author tries to get down to the foundations of the universe. The key archetypes on the canvases are those of mother, peasant, and soldier. One can discern a brilliant combination of Christian and pagan motifs in the pictures, especially in Dragon Fighter and Storm.
The artist himself points out that his canvases are based on contrast, which is the best way to comprehend the world. Light, an important element of contrast in Kabachenko’s works, is depicted in each picture one way or another – the sun, the moon, a candle, or a lit window that shine in darkness. Very often, the beams of light eloquently assume the shape of a cross.
Art critic Oleksandr Fedoruk emphasizes a particular and symbolic content and poeticism in Kabachenko’s canvases, which prompt the viewer not only to simply watch, but also to look deep into the symbols the artist uses.
One of those who attended the exhibit’s opening, the well-known poet Dmytro Pavlychko, pointed to a special Ukrainian spirit in Kabachenko’s canvases.
The exhibition “Volodymyr Kabachenko. Painting” will remain open until August 14.
