Biography
Pavlo Mykhailovych Kerestei (b. 1962, Uzhhorod) is a painter, video and photo artist, author of installations, performances, theoretical texts, and a curator.
1984 — Graduated from the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts.
From 1988 — Participant in group exhibitions. Solo exhibitions held in Munich, Germany (1994–1996, 2001–2003); Zurich, Switzerland (1997); London, UK (1998–2001); and Bremen, Germany (2002).
1989 — Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.
1990–1994 — Participant in the Parizhsky Kommunizm / Parkommuna squat, Kyiv.
1994 — Emigrated to Munich, Germany. That same year, together with Susanne Clausen, co-founded the art group Szuper Gallery.
2013 — Participated in the exhibition Contemporary Ukrainian Artists at the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK, recognized as the most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to Ukrainian contemporary art in the United Kingdom.
2020 — Participated in the international virtual art exhibition Strange Time, created by Ukrainian artist Stepan Ryabchenko within the Art Laboratory creative collective during the COVID-19 lockdown as an evolving web organism expanding its boundaries with works from artists worldwide.
His paintings are successfully sold at Phillips auctions in London.
Lives and works in Munich (Germany) and Reading (United Kingdom).
A key representative of Ukrainian Transavantgarde of the mid-1980s to early 1990s, Kerestei channels emotions, personal experiences, and visions of the future through his inner “Self,” manifesting them as post-apocalyptic narratives on canvas. To heighten the impression and emphasize a sense of catastrophic inevitability, he employs an aggressively bright color palette. Art critic and curator Viktoriia Burlaka notes: “Imagine surveillance cameras appearing in a night forest or a cave; surreal figures glowing amidst a toxic natural landscape; nature becoming an extension of the urban environment. Pavlo Kerestei’s painting radiates an anxious, morbid energy. Burning stars, falling asteroids, bloody glints, fireballs, incantations cast over this fiery spectacle. Despite the catastrophic undertones, these canvases pulse with colossal energy. They are expressive due to a chromatic resonance heated to the temperature of a stellar core and elevated to the maximum. And they are romantic—in that naive, undying faith in changes for the better.”
