Curatorial Intro to the Andriy Sahaidakovsky. Scenery. Welcome! Exhibition

This exhibition is another part of the representation program for prominent names of the modern history of Ukrainian art in the Arsenal as a museum institution. It is a continuation of already implemented large personal projects, but in contrast, the exhibition Andrii Sahaidakovskyi. The Scenery. Welcome! shows the artist’s work as a conceptually holistic and experimental, an artistic project by nature. In this case, the retrospective, collection-based and archival parts are organically intertwined in the exposition fabric of the “here and now”, “work in progress” and interaction modes.

Sahaidakovskyi’s art covers more than three decades, where each period has its own distinctive features. In addition, a thorough generalizing line comes up, which allows revealing artist’s unique identity. He is the author of numerous figurative paintings, expressionist in style and with a dominant monochrome range. Sahaidakovskyi uses unusual materials as a basis (old rugs) and pigments (of natural or even food origin), which emphasizes the artist’s conscious attraction to asceticism, the annihilation of the picturesque medium. This technique, paradoxically, provides painting with inverse – a special density and sharpness, a nervous emotion close to flickering hysteria. This condition can be categorized as “affective athleticism” – a term by Gilles Deleuze, he used in an essay on the work of the famous British artist Francis Bacon. The works of this artist at one time influenced Sahaidakovskyi, as did his immediate teacher Roman Selskyi, the heir to the European painting tradition in Lviv.

Andrii Sahaidakovskyi
Photo: Oleksandr Popenko © Mystetskyi Arsenal

Andrii Sahaidakovskyi is the author of many radical installations that absurdize and decontextualize the exhibition space. He uses unusual, biotactile means, abnormal sounds, caustic and specific smells, “trash” materials, deliberately bony inscriptions. The installations created by the artist literally envelop and, at the same time, split the closed structure of the exhibition space. This situation allows releasing utilitarian objects from their age force of gravity, transform these in the physical, functional sense, but first – associative, figurative one. Andriy Sahaidakovskyi proves to us the material quality of “poor quality”. In his installations the artist creates with a great effort a model of fiction that is more real than reality”, – very accurate observation by Jerzy Onuch, who has repeatedly worked with the artist in his curatorial projects. This statement also contains the key to decoding the name of the project, where the word “scenery” is a core one. Actually, the scenery is a place where illusion lives. The author, in his installations in particular, has long been fascinated by the creation of the immersion effect in a three-dimensional picture, a kind of 3D perception effect, but in principle with no digital tools. For the most part, these were separate rooms or spatial units. Indicative in this aspect is the exhibition “Explicit Secret” at the Soros Contemporary Art Center in Kyiv in the late 90’s. Arsenal presents a completely comprehensive system of such rooms and units. The scenery in this artist’s project has several purposes. First, the scenery is designed to create a visual image of the “exhibition performance” that unfolds in the halls. By nature and origin, this evokes associations with such concept as “simultaneous scenery”, which was common in the church’s medieval theatre. We are talking about this type of theatrical performance, which allows one placing simultaneously in a straight line on the stage all the scenery needed during the performance. Arsenal has one line either – an enfilade, but with the vaulted space of the exhibition halls instead of the stage, somewhat similar to the cult. Moreover, all this simultaneity as a holistic expositional/scenographic image can be comprehended in the process of the spectator’s movement. Of course, one is able to catch the “Ariadne’s thread” – a certain logic, some narrative of following the exhibition, understanding and interpretation of themes and references. However, at the same time, one will face the realization of this path being more complex and blurred, and in fact, more free, spontaneous. The viewer has the opportunity to decide how to interpret the informational and semantic component of the set scenery. All because the project has one more objective – change constantly the illusion and reality, thereby disorienting the visitor, bringing a bit of doubt in perception, turning the conventional optics of recognizing the visible. Such scenery is like a game – playing with these halls and in these halls. It is interesting to wander in this space in fascinating anticipation of what will happen next, what happens in the next hall, and what else the author has to offer.

Photo: Oleksandr Popenko © Mystetskyi Arsenal

Given the diversity of Sahaidakovskyi’s paintings and installations, there are several dominant cycles, subtly interconnected thematically and stylistically. Based on these it is possible to allocate a body as a fragment, anatomic studies, body equilibristic, cinema, children-warriors and children’s entertainments, sports exercises. It is no coincidence that sports is the main theme of the “Andrii Sahaidakovskyi. The Scenery. Welcome!” project. In this context, “sports” is not so much an illustration of the motto-triad “faster, higher, stronger”– determining its attractiveness in a formal, plastic way – rather a model of life, fun and games. Philosopher Johan Huizinga argues in his well-known book “Homo Ludens. The experience of defining the game element of culture” – “a game precedes, hovers over any culture”, any culture exists as a game “being played out”. Hence the term comes of “man playing” (homo ludens), which according to the author indicates the same important and defining function of our species, as well as “mastering” (homo faber). Game is a function that is not determined by biology, logic or ethics. Despite many differences, any game combines several paramount factors: rules, special spatio-temporal conditions, and fun. Sahaidakovskyi enjoys playing his game, inventing mystified fun competitions. The artist invents his own rules, designs scenery for his own exercises and disciplines, thus creating his own sports space — an imaginary, which is aesthetically consonant with the “theatre of the absurd”.

Total installation is a complex, synthetic, multilevel and multi-vector format of contemporary art. It allows including in one’s configuration and rich image field the most contradictory and extraordinary combinations, which ultimately create a general atmosphere, the project aura. This installation consists of unexpected combinations of time – past/present, paintings of different years, wall painting, enveloping interiors, video and photo documentation, wallpaper, ready-made sports equipment, a given architecture of “gyms”, quasi-functional decor, musical sounds, smells and aromas, interactive actions, games of textures and scales, shine of mirrors and “poverty” in the spirit of Arte Povera, texts and navigation…

Photo: Oleksandr Popenko © Mystetskyi Arsenal

Color solution of halls and walls is another important scenery tool in Sahaidakovskyi’s project. Grey and yellow colors are compared, very characteristic of his palette in easel works. On the one hand, the range of these two monochromes serves as a common mood construct of the exhibition. On the other hand, the calm, neutral grey actively emphasizes the sunny yellow, detonating its psychedelic qualities. The next non-minor detail – yellow planes resembling a kind of abstract murals. Their surfaces are not deaf and homogeneous, but shimmering, because the artist applies coloured layer as with a “mop”. Inevitable stains and tonal irregularities help to create a feeling of a kind of “trash” value.

Among other means used by the author in his game library, it is worth of focusing on the shadows. The game of shadows, placed on the still frame of the “shadow theatre” – this is how one of the project spaces is marked. Here, it is not only technical special effects that enhance the dramatic moments in the overall narrative, not only a certain number of symbols and connotations associated with the shadow in art offered by itself, but also a great philosophical question, which again refers to Platonic parable of the cave with shadows – assimilation to reality can acquire the character of imitation, which is away from truth and essence, when the shadow is indistinguishable from reality.

An element of scenery such as mirrors is also of a great importance, installed in one of the exhibition halls. They stylistically refer to those mirrors used in training halls for rhythmic gymnasts. In this case, these serve as additional optical load, contribute to the effect of double vision – direct and mirror-like, playing with the static and moving images contrasts. The mirror surface seems to “enhance” the space and enrich the game with reflections of light fluxes and, most importantly, provides the space with additional symbolic allusions. Thus, an association comes up subconsciously with the journey to the world behind the looking-glass, immersion in one’s own subconscious, which encourages the perception of the mirror as a “mystical interlocutor, simultaneously confirming and refuting our identity”, according to culture expert Vadim Rudnev.

Andrii Sahaidakovskyi
Photo: Oleksandr Popenko © Mystetskyi Arsenal

The artist, who does not betray the principles, intends to subject the ideal, cold, narcissistic beauty of shiny mirror surfaces in his gyms to the philosophical category of removal, cover it using brutal lard, which would remind of the Carol’s lines charm: “And the mirror, no doubt, began to melt, like a shining silver mist”.

Curatorial group