Oleksandr Nekrashevich / The Choice of Wind
15.03.2007 — 15.04.2007
Kyiv, March 15th, 2007, 5:30 PM. – the art gallery Collection will have the opening of a personal exhibition by a famous modern Byelorussian artist Oleksandr Nekrashevich. 23 of his latest paintings will be displayed in Kyiv for the first time.
Nekrashevich’s paintings are many-sided and complicated. The artist tries to show the interdependency of phenomena and objects, seeming absurd and groundless at first perusal. For example, in his work “Choice of the Wind,” after which the exhibition has been named, there is an etymological connection with butterflies that seem to have landed upon the World War II Japanese pilots’ photograph: in translation from the Japanese, kamikaze means “a holy wind.” A butterfly is a personification of this wind. It landed and made its choice. In his picture series “American Gothic” the author depicts fighter airplanes in the framework of ancient icons, inlaid with jewels, showing the new gods of today.
Nekrashevich also comments on the urgent question of handicraft and the mass production of art works. One of the pictures, “Hand Made” 2006, at first sight looks like a magnified low-quality airplane photograph, and only when you take a closer look do you understand its name. The picture is made by hand in the literal sense – using his fingers, the artist has imitated circles, typical for serigraphy. Pixels can be seen – the result of the artist’s laborious work and not of limited electronic facilities. At the same time, the complicated interior mechanism in the famous science-fiction artist Giger’s style has been painted with the finest brush. After all, every painter asks himself the question whether handicraft is meaningful in the epoch of digital technologies.
Oleksandr Nekrashevich says the following about his works: “I think more about what I depict than how I depict. It is important for me that the object should be recognizable, thus my painting style is so photorealistic. It must be Michael Jackson, and not some abstract character; it must be an F-16 or a bull terrier… for an observer to read the information immediately. For example, let’s take the work “Black-and-white Movie.” Michael Jackson is in the image of a cyborg or a man-mutant here. I am interested in his character from this very point of view. He was black and became white. The black-and-white movie. This seemed interesting, noteworthy to me.”
Daryna Zholdak, the director of the gallery Collection says: “Oleksandr Nekrashevich is undoubtedly one of the outstanding young figures in modern Byelorussian art. We have been impressed by the relevance of his plots, the delicate play on meanings and the monumental scale, with which his canvasses are created. Japanese kamikazes and Indian hunters, fighter airplanes and bull terriers, African girls on playing-cards and pop-stars … Nekrashevich opens the world, transforming each canvas into skillful modern poetry.”
With Nekrashevich’s project the gallery continues to network with modern Byelorussian artists. The brilliant Byelorussian painter Ruslan Vashkevych’s successful exhibit last autumn was the first to begin the “Byelorussian” projects series of the gallery. Both O. Nekrashevich and R. Vashkevich are graduates of the monumental painting department of the Minsk Academy of Art.
The exhibition “Choice of the Wind” will last until April 15th. The catalogue has been issued on the occasion of the opening of the exhibit.
The gallery Collection is open every day, except Monday, from 10 AM until 7 PM.
