We are delight to invite you to the exhibition launch of:
Talks. Andriy Sagajdakovsky
Opening will take place at 7 p.m. in Ya Gallery art centre on 55/57 Voloska Str
Andriy Sagajdakovsky's exhibition "Talks" opens in Ya Gallery Art Centre, on the geopolitical territory that is unstably balancing between the values of Western and Eastern cultures. It has already been two years that his mailbox has been receiving letters from a Japanese. The Japanese is a graphic artist who is meticulously sending packages with his works to Lviv. In return Sagajdakovsky maintains the connection by replying with his own cards. From this cross-cultural correspondence emerged the concept of the exhibition entitled "Talks". Sagajdakovsky says: "I doubt that a dialogue with the Japanese will turn out successful, but it is worth trying. For attempts to establish such a dialogue have already taken place".
In graphic works by Joseph Beuys we stumble upon the forms of a circle and a cross, where a circle is an archetype of the Asian entity and cross - of the European one. Various lines, angles, systems and crossings represent Western cultural structures; circles, domes, spheres and disks are Eastern cultural prototypes. Another example is the text by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer". In a conversation that lasts for a half a hundred pages the philosopher and the Japanese do not find a common language, because they converse according to the scheme "one says something, another - something completely different". When the dialogue touches upon the issues of art, the Japanese warns Heidegger: "You have already pointed out what got in your way: the language of our dialogue was European; yet the Eastern Asian entity of Japanese art was to be comprehended". Yet this formula of misunderstanding that can appear in any conversation - and in the dialogue between European and Asian culture even more so - is not a fatal dead end for Sagajdakovsky. "The process goes on!" - states the artist.
In the gallery hall postcards from the Japanese form a circle. Carpets around them lead the dialogue in European. On their surfaces almost a battle emerges between stencil print and handwriting, between a system and a person, between a person and the nature. The sorrows of young Goethe undergo in a battle with the "Don't bite your nails" template on the field of Romanticism vs. Classicism opposition. The nature that has moved on to the spring stage of its existence, is unaware of the message carried by a spring dance that people dance merrily near a puddle in its honor.
"The process goes on" formula contains the essence of Sagajdakovsky's attempt to start a dialogue between cultures not aiming to achieve any final goal, but trying to disclose the very phenomenon of the dialogue. It is this intermediary two-way act that embodies the energy of art: "The process goes on!"