In the late 1950s Hnat Tarasiuk, village teacher in Zhytomyr oblast, painted several similar pictures. The characters are recurring: a woman in red and a man in black, a boat in which they sit, a river, swans, and trees... He did not paint it from life, it was his internal vision of a perfect river landscape. “He wanted it to just hang on a wall and bring joy to people,” says artist Oleh Hryshchenko, Tarasiuk’s grandson.
Many years later Oleh created several series, united by a project called “By the River”; the grandfather’s landscapes became an impetus for it. The artist separates the layers of the plot, creates separate stories about the river, the things on its floor, the trees around, the couple in the boat... The purpose is to show the world, which is the quintessence of naive painting, in wider perspective.
The project consists of several parts; the exhibition at Ya Gallery art center presents the series about the river and the trees on the river’s other side (one wants to say “otherworldly trees”). The art was made at Velykyi Pereviz art residence, located on the river Psel, in the eponymous village in Poltava oblast. In the real landscape, the painter revived the imaginary landscape of folk paintings. Each day Oleh came to the river and painted almost the same thing. “It was repetition with sublime changes in details. Like the river you see every day stays the same, yet it is constantly changing,” smiles Hryshchenko.
The principal element of the exhibition is “The Artist’s Book,” a real diary with notes, sketches, reflections on the project, and life in general. The artist was keeping the diary while living in the art residence. “You can observe the progress of my thoughts as they changed during the project,” says he. It is interesting to contemplate on the artistic process, as, for example, he sought the perfect shape for the boat, or thought about materials he worked with.
The artistic diary has Hryshchenko’s works interspersed with quotations from the Doctor Leonardo’s Travels through the Switzerland of Slobidska Ukraine with His Future Lover, the Beautiful Alchesta by Maik Yohansen. Actually, a quote from this book served as an epigraph to the project. These words rhyme with the idea of “By the River” as it is written in the Doctor Leonardo’s Travels: “Therefore, landscape cannot be successfully interpreted in literature by conventional descriptive methods. However, if one writer would think of shifting mutual roles of landscape and characters, then it would be an entirely different issue...” Also “The Artist’s Book” includes illustrations for Yohansen prose.
Another attempt to capture the creative process – is a kind of video-reconstruction of the paintings’ plot, made while traveling by the river. The author notes that it is, in fact, a documentary, “the same you see on the paintings, but live.”
Unlike the mythical Lethe, which brings forgetfulness, Hryshchenko’s river revives the ancient family history. “The project has not yet been finished; I made a presentation of what I do, and announced my future work. Almost everyone said that in their families they have pictures similar to those drawn by my grandfather. We started to remember whose they were,” says Oleh. “It is great to work with this, it’s like a reconstruction project when you are trying to feel the imaginary naive landscapes trough art.”
The exhibition presents the first part of “By the River” project. The artist is going to put on display the second part – about the people in the boat and the boat itself – at Mystetsky Arsenal during the group exhibition of Ukrainian Naive Art.
The exhibition “By the River” at Ya Gallery continues through April 11.
