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​Flashback

Oleksandr Korol

03.12.2019 – 09.01.2020

Oleksandr Korol

Flashback is an artistic technique of interrupting a sequence of events by returning back in time in order to explain the behavior of characters or to reveal the content of an event. Individual works are conditional flashbacks that relate to various topics of modern life and reality, but do not add up to an aggregate picture.

Flashback is an artistic technique of interrupting a sequence of events by returning back in time in order to explain the behavior of characters or to reveal the content of an event. Individual works are conditional flashbacks that relate to various topics of modern life and reality, but do not add up to an aggregate picture. Constant flash-reminders bring consciousness to the idea that there should be some kind of harmonious scenario and a clear storyline. Themes of fairy tales, myths, religion, fragments of social processes, resorting to the stylistics of different artists and this is all as a step back to better make out and better understand the picture of modernity. This project returns to previous topics, and also begins to study new ones, using the principle of mixing themes and material, mixing of styles, modernizing biblical subjects.

If we liken to the works of notable painters of various times and look for imprints of their impact in the works presented here, then we can separate them as follows: Brueghel, Warhol, Kiefer (Babylon), Masaccio, Giotto (Exile), Kelley (Kotygoroshko, Numen II ), Picasso (Jump), Warhol (Check), Baselitz (Potato, leg, shovel), Warhol (Pseudo-Icon series), Matisse (Goldfish). All works are joined by the style and elements of pop art and street art.

The name furthermore has personal meaning: the last exhibition was held in 2016, so the current one can also be called a comeback. It takes place in Lviv, in a city where years of education have passed and with which many memories are associated. Therein likewise is a peculiar return in time, but in a different manifestation.

Author

Oleksandr Korol was born in 1974, lives and works in Dnipropetrovsk.

In 1995 he graduated from Yevgeny Vuchetich State Art School, and in 2004 - from Ukrainian Academy of Printing in Lviv.

"With the exception of single cases when Oleksandr Korol lets himself dive into the pure abstraction, his works are populated by various creatures: from easily recognizable, but childishly, primitively stylized, to touching, unprotected, extraterrestrial (in meditative graphical or collage sheets of paper) and finally - fantasy, unreal, malformed and even horrifying. The painter may create a cozy circle marked with a theme of childhood and unexpectedly, like a child that tries to overstep the limits of permitted, - runs into the uncontrolled adult world with its fears and dangers. But there are more game and interest in this process: things transmitted from life into the plane surface stop scaring you."