BLOOMSDAY / A PERFECT AGE
10.07.2008 — 01.09.2008

My language should be edited afterwards.
I speak with mistakes and
without any punctuation marks.

D.S. Likhachev, à word to reader, the preface to the novel Ulysses by J. Joyce.

The first BLOOMSDAY festival was hosted by the Collection Gallery in Kyiv in 2007. It featured the most interesting 27 painters from Ukraine and abroad.

This year Age As Philosophy of Time was selected as the subject of the new project. We believed it would be interesting to combine those two categories – Age and Time.

It is no chance that Leopold Bloom is compared with Odysseus. Joyce believes that Odysseus is the most integral, perfect character in the world literature. To start with, Joyce loved the fullness of his life experience: Odysseus is a son, father, husband, lover. The artist’s objective is to implement that experience. Joyce succeeded in creating a perfect character. We turned to the perfect age.

We have invited seven great Ukrainian artists – Olexandr Gnylytskyi, Maxim Mamsikov, Mykola Matsenko, Olexandr Roitburd, Arsen Savadov, Oleg Tistol and Illya Chichkan. Olexander Soloviev being one of the most competent curators, is involved as the expert of the contemporary Ukrainian art.

The choice of authors is not random. The middle age is a bloom of strength, a middle point, a summary. Each project member has turned or is at a middle age (conventional age of Leopold Bloom). Everyone is in his period of bloom, representing the pinnacle of the Ukrainian art.

In preparing the project the artists held dialogs with Olexander Soloviev. Their responses have made up the Artists Texts, that we also present in the catalogue. Also the authors made a new paintings in parallel with working on the text. Thus, both the Text and the Painting become one creative act.

The portrait – of not just the author, but of the time – was born. The look from 2008. The artist’s portrait from inside. The future will test their words. We believe it will be interesting - in the first place for the participants themselves - to compare in about 5 – 10 years not really the views (they are not about to be changed at that age), but rather the quality of assessment, setup, intonation …

We have not “polished” the texts on purpose. We have made only minimal stylistic corrections, as the verbal communication tends to expand, and tried to preserve the authors’ style as much as possible.

We believe we have succeeded. The magma of several voices has joined in a single powerful stream – the full-flowing river of the Ukrainian contemporary art.
Oleg Bayshev
Daryna Zholdak
Yuriy Kogutiak
Collection Gallery