Kyiv. Ya Gallery Art Center

Margin

Pavlo Makov

03.06.2015 – 29.06.2015

Pavlo Makov

"The Margin" is the continuation and development of the plots that were started by the artist in the previous exhibitions. The neglected spaces of the last series, geographic layouts that always tell the stories of people avoiding their actual presentation, in this new exhibition approach to the anthropomorphic imagery.

Exhibition Kyiv Ya Gallery Art Center

«...Ukraine is the country, which doesn't exist. The present time is a margin, Archipin's space between two different Ukraines. This time will not belong to the history, neither of the first nor the second Ukraines. So weak is their connection. Modern Ukraine is a break, volcano, which changes the basic geography" - Taras Prokhasko, One and the Same1

Even at their first meeting Pavlo Makov and Taras Prokhasko intended to create a common book, which would consists of etchings and texts. The essential condition of its creation had to be the absence of any discussion of its content. The theme of gardens had to unify the content while the details create and develop a polylogue without unnecessary preliminary agreements. Nominally, the book is not created, but that does not mean its complete absence. According to Prokhasko, "a common project may even be in a form that we just know about it" 2.

The quotation from the last novel "One and the Same", which is used as an epigraph to this text, relates to the main themes of Pavel Makov, in a strange way. From the look at Ukraine as a Utopia (the country, which doesn't exist) to an explanation of its fate by the geography [and plants] language. The first book meditation concerning the country that "reminds a double bag" 3, according to the artist, is the most accurate text of his work.

"The Margin" is the continuation and development of the plots that were started by the artist in the previous exhibitions. The chain launched by the exhibition "Blanket, City, Tower, Cross, Fate" (PinchukArtCentre, 2011) and continued by the exhibition "Paradiso Perduto" (National Art Museum of Ukraine, 2014) and new exhibition "The margin" (Ya Gallery, 2015) is a story that has begun as a sort of "ethnographic research" of surrounding people, who share common space with you, with their own vision of happiness for life on Earth. No matter what, this happiness is - a container or country house, - but in time "the country-idea, which dreamed of its paradise while surviving and defending" 4, has found itself in a slightly different form. In a situation of excessive latency accumulation, unmanifested dreams and, at the same time, broken bonds of the "lost paradise".

Indeed, the skills to feel this margin are formed throughout life. We notice how the single earth is divided into zones by a dog. How the prohibitions work in one space, and are completely leveled in other. What place has a sacred status, and which one is separated by its historical value. But it turns out that combined artificial and natural discarded lines are mixed. The separation of spaces is worth nothing. It is not able to identify and distinguish itself. "All attributes of Christianity, as a system, are imbued with the rules of coexistence with the spirits"5, rules of spaces (and other rules) does not apply. Basic geography is abandoned and forgotten, as the lines do not actually pass through the settlements. The spaces are separated by the boundary, which, sometimes, have meaning, or by the boundary which crossing worth nothing.

The circle is closed: the boundary crossed Shastya village. We can see a new element in the works. It is constructions of concrete blocks, which take a role of punctuation in reading of maps.

At the same time, the "margin" is just a word understandable regardless of language, either in Ukrainian or in Russian.

The neglected spaces of the last series, geographic layouts that always tell the stories of people avoiding their actual presentation, in this new exhibition approach to the anthropomorphic imagery. The base of etching composition is a structure of fingerprint that is a synonym for the human face, a guarantor of personal interest that the garden will grow. "The Margin" is a project about responsibility. It is about the next step that should be taken today. The touch is a form in a moment before seen a plan of the labyrinth, through which we go in our attempts to identify the structure of the whole human being.

So, what the way we pass from Utopia to the Margin? What is the time, when the place, which doesn't exist, has to define its boundaries?

Borys Filonenko

1. Prokhasko Taras. One and the Same. - Chernovtsy: Knygy - ХХІ, Meridian Czernowitz, 2013. - P.20

2. NO self-expression as a way to success Taras Prokhasko and Pavlo Makov. - Galician correspondent. - Electronic resource: http://gk-press.if.ua/node/18183

3-5. Prokhasko Taras. One and the Same. - Chernovtsy: Knygy - ХХІ, Meridian Czernowitz, 2013. - P.5, P.21, P.16

Author

Pavlo Makov was born in 1958 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Lives and works in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

He graduated from the Crimean Art College, Painting Department (Simferopol, Ukraine) in 1979, Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1978 and Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute (Graphic department) in 1984.

Since 1988 he is a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, since 1994 – is a member of the Royal Society of Painters-Printmakers (London, England) and a correspondent member of the Ukrainian Art Academy, since 2006.

Tags:

object makov kyiv
Virtual tour
23.10.2019 – 01.12.2019
Exhibition Lviv Ya Gallery
12.06.2019 – 15.07.2019
Exhibition Kyiv Ya Gallery
27.10.2015 – 28.11.2015
Exhibition Dnipropetrovsk Ya Gallery Art Center
19.12.2012 – 28.01.2013
Exhibition Kyiv Ya Gallery Art Center