The more you dip in the Angels theme, the more you feel its fathomlessness.

I had an idea of creating such a project a long time ago, and today I can't even remember what the first impulse was. The theme turned out to be inexhaustible, so it became especially interesting to simultaneously apply different models of its interpretation. Thus, I tried to present the visual phenomenon of Angels in a most typical way by creating a sort of anthology and using the curatory technique that I called an 'exhibition-book.'

I intended the project's model to have the format that allows its further expansion to a trilogy of a secular culturological view on sacral phenomena with the first part devoted to Angels.

Having divided all materials into conditional topics (winged, stories, culture, angels and people) and relying on the available works, I started forming the separate narrative lines of the project.

We began to work as a team on it gradually extending the circle of participants and experts. We cooperated with consultants and researches in all aspects with everyone being responsible for the certain subjectivity of interpretation, thus making the project polyphonic and personalizing our own attitude towards Angels.

From the very beginning, we went beyond the exclusively standard museum range of exhibits by defining the spectrum of the visual research of angles from iconography to mass culture. We collected the main body of historically important exhibits from Ukrainian museums, libraries and private collections, we photographed sculptures and paintings in cathedrals. We also paid attention to the modern art, cinema, comics, fantasy and even everyday artifacts. Some thematic expectations failed, while others found a surprising expansion.

Angels are everywhere — these conclusions raise no objections, although it is not always true: we noticed that there were no angels at some times.

What is the time for angels today? What is their role and place in the modern accelerated and pragmatic world? How is this winged image going to be transformed further? In view of the fantastic and blurry nature of the concepts and directions, these questions remain to be rhetorical. Our project is the field of experiment, bold interpretation, modern thoughts, perception of feelings and extension of audience. We offer you a modern visual research of the image of an angel in the formats of a book and an exhibition.

I thank everybody who got involved, created and cheered for the result, who was patiently preparing the project for many years, who supported, who provided their works, time and talent to translate this idea into a reality.

Pavlo Gudimov

Project Curator

Official project web-site - http://angels.yagallery.com/

Official project facebook-page - Angels.Exhibition

Organizers - Ya Gallery Pavlo Gudimov Art Center, Lviv National Art Gallery named Boris Voznitsky