“Nature Matter” by Sergei Sviatchenko.

21

September

2018

On 15 September, Art Centre Silkeborg Bad (KunstCentret Silkeborg Bad) presented a personal exhibition of Ukrainian-Danish artist Sergei Sviatchenko under the title “Nature Matter”. In co-operation with the unique nature of the peninsula of Northern Jutland (Denmark), the artist changes the given landscape, immersing the architecture of the exposition centre in a new landscape created by him. The opening of the project was accompanied by the presentation of a catalogue, art directed by James Greenhow (UK), featuring exhibited artwork and essays by Iben From, Director of Art Centre Silkeborg Bad, Ukrainian curator Nataliia Matsenko, and an introduction by curator Faye Dowling (UK). About the origins of the creative method of Sviatchenko and a large-scale artistic initiative, which includes collages, photographs, installations and paintings, here by the editor of ART UKRAINE Roksana Rublevska.

Sviatchenko's new project “Nature Matter” is created by his study of natural landscapes and consists of several plot lines. The artist transforms landscapes, adding architectural buildings into a distinctive conceptual game. The exhibition presents not only new works but also previous works of the author, taking into account the cycle of collages “Secretly” (2013-2014), “Resisting Interpretation” (2013), in which he explores how nature changes when it gets dark, and earth colours suddenly begin to seem supernatural. The continuation of the visual story is the new canvases by Sviatchenko “Dialogues of Days Silence” (2017), representing a rich panorama in dark green, deep brown and red tones inspired by memories of forest and lake from his youth. However, not a significant part of the exhibition is a new series of large-format collages “Natural Matter” in which the artist again returns to the black and white palette.

The idea of the project “Nature Matter” arose in 2016, when the artist created a photographic series of collages dedicated to one of his most beloved places in Denmark, the surroundings of Art Centre Silkeborg Bad. According to the author, the purpose of such a complex multimedia experiment was an attempt to picture the memory flashed related to his own impressions about the nature of Denmark and Ukraine. “My major task is to connect different ethnopsychological codes into a new integral visual structure, emphasizing the object of research as an element of inspiration and attention. This exhibition is about the impact of nature on each of us and the internal processes taking place in my creativity now,” Sviatchenko comments.

The exposition is based on the architectural principle of the flow of spaces. The entire building of the centre covers a gigantic black-and-white photo and collage installation “Nature Matter” (8.5 x 40 m), transforming the environment into theatrical and surrealistic. Among Sviatchenko’s masterpieces, there is no rationalist tendency peculiar to Western philosophy and conceptual art. It is the sensory perception of the world that becomes an important semantic component of his works and most fully comprehended by him through the genre of the landscape.

The author studies the nature directly, developing the principles of space perspective construction, which give to the individual elements and phenomena sacred meaning. The confidence he looks in the past with, trying to restore the forgotten by technological civilization unity with nature, is the ultimate goal. Sometimes it may seem that his floristic landscapes are too surrealistic - they are completely subordinate to the human presence in them, but in fact, the very principle of anthropocentrism is so deeply rooted in our consciousness that the artist purposely uses it as the key to project understanding. "Working on a collage by the principle of ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficiently’ activates compositional thinking. Aestheticism is expressed through a set of properties: harmony, colourfulness, contrast and, most importantly, through the construction of an image out of a probability," he says.

Sviatchenko’s metaphorical collage can be viewed through the prism of the postmodern method. He uses it to examine new models of eclecticism, use of other styles for their critical thinking. Distinctive is the fact that the author, being an architect by training, uses simple harmonic forms when developing the technical methods of collage. He uses collage not to create a subject often even single-texture, composition but to create plastic forming and find necessary colour scheme. The common thing between collage as a technique and landscape collage is in the possibility of the latter moving unfixed objects to change the angle of the viewers, transforming the underlying meaning of the work. Unlike those who use collage as a sketch, the artist’s works are completed stories with drama that have varied interpretation because of the multiplicity of elements. 

It seems, Sviatchenko understands nature as a self-sufficient system, which is primarily reflected in colour and visual symbolism. His awareness of the space essence is intuitive and related to the dynamics of light. The detached human silhouettes, in combination with the floral symbols, show the dependence of man on natural rhythms, and the world is only a place for time in which mankind is placed in its mechanism – nature. Its image leads to the idea of ​​the subordination to the laws of universe, which the author attempts to convey by compositional weight. 

Analysing the works of Sviatchenko, it becomes clear that the main characters of his visual stories are nature and time, enriched by the introduction of elements that usually transmit nostalgic mood. He shows the viewers deep metaphysical space for contemplation. A sense of time in the artist’s works is expressed in the smoothness of tonal, colour and light qualities, some archaic details that tend to myth. And if you consider the category of time as a character, then the landscape itself is the genre that allows it to act. 

The project was supported by Brovdi Art and Abramovich Art

Original Article: Art Ukraine