NEW YORK – On Thursday, January 25, Art at the Institute hosted an opening reception and presentation of “Five Elements of War,” a provocative installation of assemblages by Kyiv-based artist-activists Daria Marchenko and Daniel Green. Sponsored and presented by Raymond F. Staples, the exhibition was arranged and organized for display at The Ukrainian Institute of America by Walter Hoydysh, Ph.D., director of Art at the Institute.
While much war-related art typically functions as propaganda – diminishing the humanity of the enemy and emphasizing the glorious defense of homeland or ideology – other art employs extreme emotionalism to open eyes and hearts to the brutality of war.
Ms. Marchenko and Mr. Green conceived and produced the artworks comprising “Five Elements of War” as an impassioned and direct reaction to the calculating and greedy geopolitical strategies of an autocratic strongman and his corrupt institutions. The artists’ sole intention with this installation was to elicit visceral associations and responses in the Western viewer to the ongoing Russian military aggression and war waged in eastern Ukraine.
To date, the conflict has tragically claimed over 10,000 military and civilian lives, and internally displaced close to 2 million persons. Both artists took part in the 2014 uprising against the country’s Russian-backed regime, known as the Maidan Revolution, and witnessed the tragic killing of friends and fellow demonstrators on the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city.
“‘Five Elements of War’ offers an ‘in your face,’ frank, first-hand view of the impact of Russia’s military aggression and propaganda on Ukrainian society and culture,” said Dr. Hoydysh. “We hope it gives audiences a deeper understanding of the conflict and its ramifications, not just in Europe but also here in the U.S.”
The five multi-media works installed against the backdrop of the UIA’s ballroom interiors served to universalize the condition of brutality and victimization. Ms. Marchenko and Mr. Green created scenarios fraught with tension and a sense of high drama. In their traditional role of creative seers, they invoked metaphorical images of war – its causes, direct and indirect effects – filled with significance that is otherwise inexpressible. Angry. Condemning. Critical.
Among the artists’ achievements has been the establishment of visual symbols for complex socio-economic and political issues that are recognized and often experienced, but never fully understood. In their visually dense panel, “The Heart of War” (2016), the human circulatory system is figuratively exchanged with the rapacious depletion of our planet’s natural and human resource energy, shown flowing through the veins of a faceless kleptocrat. Conquering new territories and asserting spheres of influence, the dictator’s arms transform into oil derricks, his heart pumping oil instead of blood.
Even though the installation’s artworks were clearly political, most compelling was their material nature. Ms. Marchenko and Mr. Green faithfully delivered spent battle evidence and presented it to us, forthright. They incorporated, into their works, found objects including documents, military epaulets, munition shell casings, photo optic lenses and shrapnel – all gathered from the war’s frontlines. Reclaiming these objects, they effortlessly combined them into productions of meaning, if not the sublime.
Assemblage – the process of joining two and three-dimensional organic or prefabricated materials that project out from a surface plane, is among the most significant achievements in 20th century art. It is a process that revolutionized our ideas about the nature and presentation of art and influenced every major movement of our time. Assemblage and its parallel collage techniques expanded the artist’s vernacular, allowing for greater formal diversity and an increased expressive range. It is an established mode of communication employing words, symbols and signs as freely as it does pigments, materials and objects.
As a method practiced by major artists, the art of assemblage originated in the early years of the 20th century. Successive generations of artists, beginning with the Futurists and Dadaists, employed assemblage and collage as the medium of choice to protest entrenched political and social values. A latter-day language for impatient and hypercritical artists, this creative process can thus be said to present a compelling historical record of our time.
What begins, for the artists here, as the reiteration of flat-plane painting culminates in a new way of representing the third dimension through the presentation of frontline vestige. Whichever way they outright address the economics and politics of war and authoritarianism, they also reflect their personal ambition to come to terms with the role of the artist, not as provocateur, but as participant. In addition, they are also sensitizing us to the Ukraine they know, which they believe has a lesson to teach us. These themes cannot be dealt with on the level of history or mythology – they are too recent to be relegated to myth. Ms. Marchenko and Mr. Green have brought us face to face with the recent past and offer no escape.
Where “Five Elements of War” came up short was Ms. Marchenko and Mr. Green’s dire need to overly contextualize and justify their production’s raison d’être, corrupting the process of unfettered visual and emotional engagement with the artworks described. Labored elucidations were all but foreign to much of the listening (and viewing) audience. Witness the tableaux on full display, the artists’ running commentary proved unremarkable and irrelevant. In essence, the original work here is the only thing that really matters. No advance call for tedious reflection and dogged explanation is necessary; it is one’s own discovery and deep immersion with the installation’s formidable components that is key. If, however, after endeavoring to truly see and experience the transcendent narrative assembled the viewer nevertheless requires full explanation, then the failure runs in the work, not the viewer.
Despite their conceptual underpinnings, the works are memorable for their emotional resonance. Although the decided meanings of the pieces are obscure and not immediately recognized, their references to the war in Ukraine are inescapable, evoking a poignant sense of anxiety, frustration, tragedy and loss.
“The Heart of War” (2016, oil, acrylic, shell casings on board, 67½ by 141¾ inches) by Daria Marchenko and Daniel Green.
The exhibition’s signature piece, the seven-foot high “The Face of War” (2015), unapologetically depicts the figure behind the purposed conflict in Ukraine – Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is cleverly composed of oil, acrylic and 5,000 bullet casings gathered at the battlefront in the Donbas. Depending on the play of light thrown, the “mood” of the piece alters. A devised lighting rig accompanying the work mechanically projected alternating hues over its appearance nearing that of campy spectacle.
The “portrait” intended to unveil a wide spectrum of multi-sensory and visceral emotions, all the while emphasizing cross-border socio-political complexities, propagandist agitation and lies generated of the conflict, and generalities of human nature in the time of war. It’s a tall order at the artists’ behest for any audience. “The Face of War” delivered most satisfactorily in ambient light a revelation affirming the labyrinthine convergence of paint and object across the surface of the subject’s superb likeness. The deeper the unmediated viewing exploration, the more significant the journey into a nefarious temperament.
Two monumental and stunning combine-paintings and a sculpture rounded off the narrative account: “Honor” (2016), “The Flesh of War” (2016) and “The Brain of War” (2016). Each artwork spoke to a unique and deep-seated aspect of the war, but was at the same time conceptually linked to the other pieces, forming an overall thematic composition bridging the halls of the installation.
These works can help us locate meaning in seemingly incomprehensible events consequent to the Euro-Maidan protests of early 2014. By removing the actuality to a mythic plane, they can also focus communal grief and outrage. They evoke a sense of shared pain and potentially serve as vehicles for awareness, opposition and resistance. But in the final analysis, it is not the specific issue or event of war that stands out. What we come away with is a concerted sense of the raw human condition. Rather than feeling set apart, we feel connected.
“Five Elements of War” was previously exhibited at M17 Gallery (Kyiv), the Rayburn House Office Building (Washington), and The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago). Its most recent iteration at The Ukrainian Institute of America ran from January 5 to February 4, and was made possible with the generous support of Mr. Staples, Self-Reliance New York Federal Credit Union and JRC Management Co.
About Art at the Institute
Celebrating its 64th year of activity, Art at the Institute is the visual arts programming division of The Ukrainian Institute of America. Since its establishment in 1955, Art at the Institute has organized projects and exhibitions with the aim of providing post-war and contemporary Ukrainian artists a platform for their creative output, presenting it to the broader public on New York’s Museum Mile. These heritage projects have included numerous exhibitions of traditional and contemporary art, and topical stagings that have become well-received landmark events.