Voloshyn Gallery participates in the fair Scope Miami Beach 2016
29th of November – 4th of December 2016, USA 801 Ocean Drive Miami Beach, Florida
Scope Art Show is a satellite of the most prestigious contemporary art fair Art Basel and is known as the launching pad for many world famous galleries. This year, Scope Miami Beach is held for the 16th time. More than 130 galleries from 57 cities are taking part in the art fair, in total 22 participating countries. More than 55,000 visitors are expected during 6 exhibition days, including famous curators, collectors and representatives of leading media resources. Scope Miami Beach sets the standard for the international art audience and the art market that is emerging in some countries.
Voloshyn Gallery participates in the Scope Art Show for the second time and represents Ukraine with the project of three artists – Anna Valieva, Mikhailo Deyak and Maria Sulymenko.
The artist Anna Valieva in her paintings of the series Memories of the future and the past has delved into the study of philosophical questions: “What are memories? What do we know about them and how does our memory work?” – since everything that was so clear and expressive in our memory yesterday, a week, a year ago, gradually escapes and fades away. Time erases sharpness and softens contours, leaving only a feeling. Alright. Then, what is time?”. Anna reflected her search, feelings and experiences on the canvas of her paintings, starting a new phase by the creation of monochrome collage sketches, and got so carried away that the sketches have become self-sufficient works exhibited as individual paintings. Resembling old framed family photographs, the collages represent a selection of “abstraction-memories” that are sometimes deliberately blurred so that each viewer could feel involved pulling out from their subconsciousness similar associations. In this respect, collage technique gives great opportunities. Anna says that using magazines for this purpose gives you more freedom as everything is ready, detailed and printed, all elements can be taken separately and transferred into any new form. If one creates all these parts on their own, there is a risk that you will not be able to treat them so easily. That is to take these pieces and, like our memories, put them in layers on top of each other. Sometimes Valieva fills the pages from old magazines with thick black paint, like things that are forever erased and go out from our memory.
Apart from that, the project presents Mikhailo Deyak’s works of the three different series. One of them is a minimalist landscape with muted composition and complex colour pattern from the series Space. Another work to be presented is a painting “Stools” from the series The Essence of Things. Both works were written on the glass. It’s no coincidence the artist chose this material – his childhood was spent in the Carpathian region, where the area has been for centuries famous for the originality and abundance of rare artistic techniques such as glass iconography. Perhaps all this is reflected in the author’s subconscious – hence the craving for such experiments. Apart from that, Scope Miami Beach 2016 presents the sculpture Flower, created in Genesis art-objects cycle, which arose from the artist’s sensitivity seeking new forms of expression. This way broad, dynamic and open Mikhailo Deyak’s painting technique has been transformed into a new plastic style: there was a series of expressive abstract sculptures created. Therefore, the metal compositions are expressing an association with certain objects or phenomena, but they are not allegorical, the viewer can associate them with their own experiences. According to the artist: “These objects embodied associative things that somehow influenced and inspired me in different situations. The idea probably is not clearly expressed, so viewers will be able to finish it for themselves through their own perception.”
Maria Sulymenko’s paintings presented by the gallery are noted for both simplicity and laconicism, while also fascinating the viewers. Any movement appears to be captured in slow motion or frozen on the canvas. The artist says that she didn’t set any specific intended purpose or concept, that her works are not only about what she sees, but the way how she sees it, above all it is her desire to convey the atmosphere to the audience. “I’ve always loved the office space where everything is strange, mysterious, empty, with its rituals and hierarchies. What’s happening there? What are people doing? Maybe sitting back chilling or perhaps planning to invade the universe. I am very sensitive about my characters, though they are not the most important, they are not real people, but rather impersonal – but it is nice to think that they have a life outside the painting,” – Maria Sulymenko says. The artist obviously delicately and thoroughly compiles all the details of her paintings, at the same time leaving the viewer with an impression of improvisation and informality. The works’ characters are beyond any specific epoch, they are placed in the environment, which is only nominally and sometimes naively defined, with the images referring to the sphere of subconsciousness rather than to obvious things.
The artist Anna Valieva is making her first appearance at the Scope Art Show, and has already hit the EXHIBITOR HIGHLIGHTS. The artist’s projects are diverse and vary from monumental paintings to sculpture installations and fashion magazines’ collages. The artist is constantly in search and development and each of her projects has a completely new idea and implementation in the new material. The reflections on current issues are reflected in her art studies.
In 2016 Anna Valieva’s painting “Madonna with Child” was sold at Phillips auction for $5 500. The artist lives and works in Kiev, Ukraine.
Mikhailo Deyak represents the younger generation of contemporary Ukrainian artists. He works at the intersection of neo-expressionism and minimalism, experiments with materials by using glass and metal, and masterfully applies all painting techniques. The artist is intensively engaged in exhibition activities, and his works are sold at many auctions. In 2013, Mikhailo enjoyed his first international success, when one of his paintings was in the top ten of the most valuable paintings of Ukrainian artists, whose works have been sold for over a year in public sale. According to Art investment magazine, Mikhailo Deyak was listed in the top-20 of young contemporary artists of the CIS. Mikhailo Deyak’s success and popularity at international art stage are continuously growing. In 2015, a painting made on a glass piece, one of his Stools series, was purchased at Phillips auction for $16 000. This sale passed the top estimate and became the highest one Mikhailo has ever experienced at the mentioned auction. At the end of 2014, the painting from his series Klitschko Brothers Emotion was sold at a Phillips auction for $11 800. In June 2016, Voloshyn gallery presented Ukraine during the international art-fair SCOPE Basel with Deyak’s solo exhibition of his art cycles Genesis and Space. The artist currently lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Maria Sulymenko was born in Ukraine, but after graduating from the art school in Kyiv she moved to Germany where she got a higher education at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart (Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart), at Sculpture and Painting department. Then she entered the Higher school of Fine Arts in the city of Offenbach (Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach am Main), where she studied graphic design. Her lecturers were the prominent ATAK (Georg Barber) and Eike König. It was in Germany that Maria’s personal artistic style was developed. She creates large paintings on paper and canvas. Currently the artist lives and works in Fridingen an der Donau and Berlin, Germany.
Voloshyn Gallery was founded in 2006 by spouses Max and Julia Voloshyn and called Mystetska Zbirka Art Gallery. It is located in the cultural and historical center of Kyiv on Tereschenkivska street. Voloshyn Gallery is a gallery of contemporary art, it is a platform for artistic experimentation, research and social projects.
The mission of the gallery is popularization of Ukrainian art in Ukraine and abroad. Max and Julia Voloshyn actively represent Ukrainian art abroad, facilitating its integration into European cultural processes. In February 2014 Max and Julia presented the project “Ukraine. The archetype of freedom” in Vienna in the cultural and exhibition center Novomatic Forum. The works of 15 Ukrainian artists were shown there, in which they embodied the principle of freedom. In April 2015 at the initiative of the gallery the first Ukrainian art tour to the island of Cyprus called MAKE ART NOT WAR was organized. The project was attended by seven leading artists who presented their views on war and peace in Ukraine and in particular the historical context of the whole. In 2015, Max and Julia organized a project of Ukrainian artists in New York, which took place in the Ukrainian Institute of America. In June 2016 the Ukrainian gallery represented the artists at SCOPE Basel, satellite of the most prestigious art fair Art Basel in the world.
Max and Julia Voloshyn actively support contemporary young Ukrainian artists and collect their works. In 2015, Max and Julia entered the top 30 Ukrainian collectors according to Forbes and became the youngest in this ranking. In the same year, Max and Julia came in a rating of Ukrainian Forbes: 30 successful Ukrainians under 30.