We invite you to a large-scale exhibition ‘A SUBJECT TALK ABOUT TIME AND COLOUR. 125 years in still lifes from the KhRMA collection’, which for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war widely exhibits works from the museum’s collection. The exhibition features 55 paintings from our collection, which has been carefully formed over the past 40 years.
The oldest painting in the exhibition dates back to 1900 and belongs to the brush of Heorhii Vereiskyi, a native of Proskuriv. The newest work is ‘Requiem’ by Natalia Korobova, created by the artist from Zaporizhzhia during the recently organised all-Ukrainian art residency ‘The Price of Freedom’. 125 years of traditions and innovations, stagnations and transformations in the history and modernity of Ukrainian still life art are exhibited in our museum space for the first time in such a comprehensive and representative way.
According to the academic definition, ‘still life (from the French nature morte – “dead nature”) is a genre of fine art, mainly painting, in which artists focus on the depiction of the inanimate object world.’ However, still life has long gone beyond the defined genre boundaries and even managed to question the ‘inanimate’ nature of objects. After all, still life allows you to succumb to the reverse flow of time and almost physically feel the textures and aromas of the long past. To dive deeply into the natural and staged relationships between objects and space. To be amazed to see a colour that has never been focused on before. To thoroughly explore textures and shapes in academic and contemporary compositions. To understand the modern world through the objects that surround us. To enter into a cross-cultural dialogue of different traditions and worldviews.
In the past, the still life was criticised and somewhat ignored by the totalitarian Soviet government precisely because of its apolitical nature. At the same time, many prominent artists (both realists and nonconformists) turned to still life, including Iryna Beklemisheva, Heorhii Vereiskyi, Mykola Hlushchenko, Carlo Zvirynskyi, Ivan Yizhakevych, and Volodymyr Kostetskyi, Lev Kramarenko, Mykhailo Lishchyner, Vladyslav Mamsikov, Petro Markovych, Valentyn Reunov, Hoskel Sandler, Roman Selskyi, Zenoviy Flinta, Valentyna Tsvetkova, Oleksiy Shovkunenko, Tetiana Yablonska and others, whose works are on display at the exhibition. Also, our exhibition offers an opportunity to see works by the brightest representatives of postmodernism – Andrii Antoniuk, Oleksandr Antoniuk, Yevhen Hordiets, Oleksandr Dubovyk, Roman Zhuk, Serhii Zakharov, Serhii Panich, Viktor Pokydanets, Halyna Ridna, Borys Firtsak and others.
Contemporary still life opens up new perspectives of the genre due to the influence of new technologies, political and cultural changes. Artists use still life or its elements to reflect on current issues: crises in politics and ecology, problems of consumerism and time wasting, conflicts of established values and fragility of existence, the existential paradox of the desire for creation and humanism and destruction and violence at the same time.
Still life has a unique ability to focus attention on simple and, at first glance, everyday things. The objects depicted on the canvases symbolise a certain constancy and universality. At the same time, paintings of this genre often emphasise the fluidity and transience of life. Still lifes are filled with a philosophy of being that promotes acceptance of change as a natural part of existence, inspires recovery and the search for new inner resources in difficult traumatic times.
