"New Horizons": an exhibit of contemporary art at the Ukrainian Institute (04/05/98)

"New Horizons": an exhibit of contemporary art at the Ukrainian Institute

by Olya Shevchenko

NEW YORK - A rather mysterious large triangular shape is currently visible from street level through the central second-story window of the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. This object is a painting featured in an exhibit titled "New Horizons," which opened on Saturday, March 21, at the institute.

A reception for the artists was held on Saturday at 5 p.m. during which the public had the opportunity to view the art works on display and meet the four artists represented in the show. Featured in the exhibit were Anya Farion, Roman Hrab and Marko Shuhan, all young American artists of Ukrainian descent, and Nelli Fedchun, a visiting artist from Ukraine.

The first works of art encountered upon entering the building are by Mr. Hrab, who is responsible also for the aforementioned strategically hung triangular painting. His installation "A Wing and a Prayer," in which he brings together many media, including painting on steel, photography, kinetic sculpture and even a digital video occupied the library on the first floor. In the spirit of Dada, Mr. Hrab creates works of art in which he brings together objects that seemingly have no relation to one another. However, he does not create such juxtapositions in order to simply confound, but rather to encourage contemplation and interpretaton of the new relationships created. For example, the lit candles he places on his "altar" satisfy the expectations created by this designation, but the printing plates attached above them suggest a less transparent interpretation. The central sculpture of the installation unites a motorized propellor with a pendulum-like object and four wings cast in beeswax. Mr. Hrab explains that the images and symbols found in his work are "metaphors for influences and inspirations, aspirations and fears," making his work admittedly personal, yet not unapproachable.

Paintings by Mr. Shuhan occupied the walls of the two exhibition rooms on the second floor, while the floor space is devoted to the work of the two sculptors represented in the show. Turning right at the top of the main staircase, one entered a room occupied by the marble sculptures of Ms. Farion. Together with the monochromatic paintings by Mr. Shuhan, they gave the room a somewhat muted quality. Mr. Shuhan's paintings in this room were presented linearly in three groups of four, floated in horizontal black box frames. The paintings are decidedly abstract and decorative. Each grouping features a basic shape that has been cloned and whose orientation has been repeatedly manipulated to result in mirror-image, Rorschach-like decorative patterns painted in a hard-edge style against a painterly background.

In contrast to the rather conservative palette and restraint of the works in this room, the paintings hung in the room, which was occupied also by the sculptures of Ms. Fedchun, are somewhat more energetic. In these paintings, Mr. Shuhan recycles motifs randomly created on printing screens at an earlier time by transferring them onto richly painted, active surfaces. Four of the six paintings share the same glyph-like blue symbol which reappears twice in each painting, side by side. Of special interest is a painting executed in luxurious shades of red against which the blue glyphs stand out in a particularly vivid manner.

Viewed from a specific angle, the blue color of Ms. Fedchun's "Blue Bird" was picked up nicely by the blue in Mr. Shuhan's red and blue painting that hung on the wall just beyond. This sculpture is not typical of the pieces by Ms. Fedchun included in this exhibit because it is the only one of eight that does not represent the female form, her favorite subject. In turn, her sculptures of the female form are not typical in that they are not carved in stone or cast in bronze, but are fashioned from porcelain. Their smooth, buffed surfaces and substantial appearance give them an air of being wrought from stone. Indeed, they have something of the quality of the smooth pebbles we find washed up on the shore after being polished by the waters of the sea. Ms. Fedchun abstracts the female figure, discarding unnecessary details and concentrating on the lines, in search of the quintessential form. Interestingly, she chooses to represent her female figures as armless, suggesting a kinship with the now armless sculptures of classical goddesses with which we are acquainted. She also turns to classical mythology as a source for subject matter, as in "White Venus," "Black Venus," and "The Kidnapping of Europe," whose story may be familiar to us from Titian's famous painting of the same subject. In Fedchun's highly original version, the bull has been reduced to simply its head, while the elegant, reclining figure of Europe rests precariously on his horns.

The marble sculptures of Ms. Farion have a more overt stylistic connection to classical art, which is especially evident in works such as "Travertine Torso," "Small Pink Torso" and "Draped Torso." Although abstract in the sense that the figures are idealized, the human form is not distorted in these works. Farion has taken great care to preserve the integrity of the human form and to celebrate it, in the tradition of Greco-Roman sculpture. Perhaps for reasons similar to those that resulted in Ms. Fedchun's armless female figures, Ms. Farion's finished works are conceived from the start as fragments, a state in which most ancient marble sculptures exist today. In fact, several of her titles include the very word, such as "Dream Fragment." In this work, a softly modeled face just barely surfaces from the rough matrix, expressing features that appear merely suggested rather than laboriously chiseled out of stone. The assembled group of sculptures by Farion was very mood-evoking, creating a sense of peaceful calm through gentle modeling and quiet palette.

"New Horizons," which was on view through March 29, offered the public a good opportunity to view a small cross-section of work currently being created by Ukrainian artists living in the New York area. For further information about the exhibit, organized by Anya Hnateyko and Ihor Terleckyj, contact the Ukrainian Institute of America at (212) 288-8660, or refer to the website www.brama.com/uia.