Our museum continues the project “Cheers!”, launched last year and dedicated to artists celebrating anniversaries whose works are preserved in our collection. The KhRAM collection is a unique and inseparable part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage. Its study, preservation, and promotion are our strategically important mission—especially in times of war for our freedom and identity.

Ihor Husiev, one of the most striking Ukrainian artists of recent decades, has proven himself among the most devoted to Ukrainian contemporary art. Unlike many artists and curators who began their practice in the 1990s but later turned to advertising, design, television, or publishing, Husiev never strayed from his chosen artistic path.

After a decade of phenomenal rise in Odesa’s contemporary art scene, the 2000s became a period of confusion and stagnation. But not for Husiev—the punk provocateur and lyrical visionary at once. It was then that he revised the conceptualism of the 1980s and conceived projects such as Art Raiders at the Odesa flea market and the underground gallery Norma.

In the 2010s he remarked: “My art has always existed between two ‘themes’—trash and glamour. Between them I feel quite comfortable. I like it when my art makes people smile.” Yet smiles differ, as do attitudes toward trash and glamour.

To combine the seemingly incompatible, to shift focus, to break stereotypes, to challenge values—and in the end to arrive at conceptually new meanings and visuality: this is what you find in Tesla’s Childhood (2017). This is no longer postmodern but post-media art—ironically sarcastic yet disarmingly sincere. The paradox of “cozy living” lies at the core of Husiev’s method.

Here, “old” technologies (realist painting) boldly attack and capture “new” technologies (digital abstraction), yet in the end everyone wins. “Although I am fully aware of the dominance of digital culture, which has completely flooded the field of images in public space, Husiev does not grieve over it. He uses this threat, this general reign of digital imagery, as an endless source from which he ‘feeds’ the traditional practice of painting.” (Petar Čuković, curator and art critic).

SMS for Auntie (2007) is proof of Husiev’s artistic gift of foresight—predicting the total power of technology over people, which was only looming on the horizon nearly 20 years ago. In fact, even earlier: Husiev had already created works about the massive advance of digitalization for group curatorial projects of the 1990s—New File and TVlization.

In a seemingly insignificant everyday scene, Husiev manages to create an homage to one of the classical methods of composition—built on the contrasting distribution of reflections from an interior light source (recall Caravaggio, La Tour, Pymonenko). The glow of a mobile phone screen in the 2007 canvas rhymes with the local light of a candle in 17th–19th century works, transporting the plot from the world of daily life into the timeless realm of artistic magic.

Husiev also did not bypass the ironic poeticization of “the digital”:

under the screen’s surface
a flock of likes
finishes the morning selfie

put down the phone
look into my eyes
info or passion

the ellipsis
dances
slowly
a friend is typing
a comment

Dreams come true mostly for those who set them as goals and pursue them consistently. Ihor Husiev, one of the most successful Ukrainian artists of recent decades, continues to remain devoted to Ukrainian contemporary art.

For reference:

Ihor Husiev was born on November 13, 1970, in Odesa. A Ukrainian artist who prefers painting and graphics (among his media are objects, installations, video art, performances, happenings), curator, writer, organizer and participant of art actions, leader of the Art Raiders movement, founder of the underground gallery Norma.

He graduated from the Odesa Art School named after M. B. Grekov (painting teacher—Volodymyr Kryshtopenko, drawing teacher—Vitalii Alikberov). He has participated in exhibitions since the early 1990s and is a representative of the New Wave of Ukrainian contemporary art.

He has held more than 40 solo exhibitions and projects, and has taken part in major exhibition projects in Ukraine and abroad, including Calm, Space of Cultural Revolution, Terrible-Loving, Kandinsky Syndrome, performance festival March Weekend, TVlization, New File, Restart, Cosmic Odyssey, Independent, 20 Years of Presence, special project of the First Kyiv International Biennale of Contemporary Art ARSENALE 2012 Double Game, Odesa Biennale of Contemporary Art, Days of Ukraine in Great Britain.

His works are successfully sold at international auctions. In 2013 he entered the top 25 most successful artists of Ukraine. He lives and works in Odesa.