Women!
Group exhibition of Ukrainian painters
8 Mar - 30 Apr 2023
For the first time, ArtEast Gallery presents paintings by Ukrainian artists from private collections, spanning almost fifty years from the 1970s to 2021.
The purpose of this exhibition is to represent Ukrainian women in society over the past fifty years. Artists capture female protagonists in various emotional states, ranging from false contentment or melancholia to anguish. All these representations immerse the viewer in a mysterious, fragile, and incredibly multifaceted female universe. The works gathered here also depict the traditional female environment in Ukraine and how it has changed over the past fifty years. The contrast between the male and the female perspectives of the artists also highlights discrepancies in the representation of women in society.
For instance, Iryna Yurova’s series No Inhibitions (2014), portrays a woman overwhelmed, literally and figuratively, by a pile of dishes. However, upon closer examination, it becomes evident that the dishes are placed in order, not haphazardly. They surround the heroine, denoting that apart from being a daily activity, this is her milieu, too. The viewer has to bridge the distance between the metalware and the woman, sitting on the other end of the table. The painting is almost a commentary on how the kitchen remains, for the most part, a woman’s domain in Ukrainian society. In comparison, the female nude by Yuriy Yegorov shows an idealised version of a woman, basking in the sun by the seaside. Her lack of facial features strips her of personality, rendering her a symbol or an object to be looked at. She is static, resting her foot on a rotund object. The body is rendered in the same sculptural manner as other objects present in the painting - the ball, the boats and the plinth. Moreover, by placing her figure on a plinth artist re-emphasises the link to a marble sculpture. Her seated pose and juxtaposition by the sea are all hallmarks of the tropes found in classical art. All point to the fact that Yegorov’s heroine is steeped in myth, much like the Venus of Praxiteles or Botticelli, rather than reality, like the protagonist in Yurova’s painting.
This contrast in depictions of female protagonists is further reinforced by a wide array of styles, such as figurative and abstract, naïve and modern, realistic and classical. Viewers are invited to draw parallels and contradictions between the subject matter and stylistic renderings, ponder how societal changes could have influenced representation of women, and reflect how each portrayal reveals a different facet of the female experience.
The exhibition features works by prolific artists including Yuriy Yegorov, a prominent member of the Odesa art movement, Oleksii Apolonov called the "Ukrainian Picasso", Yevhen Rakhmanin and Mykolaiv Lukin, as well as Olena Pryduvalova, Iryna Yurova and Kateryna Selezniova.
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