Ukrainian Charity Exhibitions is proud to announce the sales exhibition From the Pain to the Light at Forum Box gallery. The other sales events are planned in several European capital cities during Autumn 2022.
The exhibition at Forum Box will present works from young Ukrainian contemporary artists. Most of the works were created under the influence of the war currently taking place in Ukraine.
The work which features on the poster is Olena Shtepura’s By Own Tears. The artist describes her work as follows: “This is a severe tragedy that happened to these souls. They had to survive the torture chamber and now they have to live with it.“ Another work by Shtepura is called On the Edge. This is a work about the feeling of living in two different worlds at the same time: “I am currently in Vienna, but I also constantly read the news and live with thoughts in Ukraine. That’s why I feel the duality of two radically different moods when, on a wonderful sunny day, you drink aromatic coffee and read the news about the tragedies happening there. This is an emotional swing.”
Shtepura and her friend Ksenia Datsyuk left for Vienna in the beginning of the war and continued to create there. The result of their work was in the collaborative exhibition Stages at the Albert Art Gallery in Vienna. Two of Datsyuk’s works from the series Diary will be displayed at the exhibition; the series, which she began in the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, includes dozens and dozens of works – both sketches and full-fledged canvases.
Another artist participating in the exhibition is Zakhar Shevchuk. The exhibition features two of his works: Bucha #1 and Sowing Is Approaching. The name of the first work speaks for itself – Shevchuk depicted a frame that went around the world after the terrible tragedy that happened in the suburbs of Kyiv. Sowing Is Approaching is a very powerful work, which shows that regardless of war or shelling, Ukrainians must sow their fields in order to feed themselves and the rest of the world.
Without betraying himself Dmytro Koval – a classical Kyiv School painter – continues to create in his manner. Koval’s works have been recognized with honorary awards in Ukraine more than once, and have also been exhibited abroad on several occasions. We wanted to include his landscape painting, Red Sky over the Irpen Embankment, which depicts the imprint of the war.
Veronika Blyznyuchenko also continues to create without changing her style – incredible works, saturated with elements of Ukrainian flora and fauna. Veronika was born and lived in Kharkiv, but had to leave her hometown, which is constantly under fire, and move to Portugal. In Portugal, Veronika was welcomed very warmly by a local family, who does their best to help Veronika and encourage her to create. And she creates every day and does not plan to stop. At the exhibition we will see a poster from Veronika’s work Lilies – a bright and incredibly beautiful watercolor work. Blyznyuchenko will also auction a line of silk scarves at the opening event.
The exhibition also features a young discovery, Denys Kulikov, with his distinctive worldview and interpretation of war. Kulikov creates his works digitally, but this does not make them less significant, but rather the opposite. His two works It’s Not for Nothing that You Caught the Grains and You’re Not Welcome Even in Hell satirically mock the army of the occupiers. In the first work, we see sunflowers sprouting all over the skull; they sprout from a seed that the occupier brought to our land. In the second work, we see how the Devil expels the dead occupants from hell, because even there they are not welcome.
Yuriy Denisenkov is another bright representative of the Ukrainian school of painting. Denisenkov’s works reflect the consequences of the tragedy that happened in the suburbs of Kyiv, in the cities of Irpin and Bucha. We will show Denisenkov’s works from the series Evacuation. Denisenkov describes these works: “During the evacuation from Kyiv, I saw a large number of mutilated, shot and burned cars. People tried to escape in these cars, but were shot by the Russian occupiers almost to the shelter. In this work, it was important for me to convey the feeling of corporeality, the fragility of human life.”
Veronika Cherednychenko reflects on the theme of war through abstraction. At the exhibition, Veronika will present two works from the Black Sprout series. Veronika describes this series of works as follows: “Inspired by nature that has been destroyed or traumatized by war. At the time of creating the works, it was about my feeling of the cessation of development and life, the abstract stopping of time and all organic processes. But in the middle of summer, we all saw photos of burnt Ukrainian fields. So now this series looks even more obvious.”
Most of the works from the participating artists were donated to Ukrainian Charity Exhibitions and part of the money from the sales will be further donated to the rehabilitation of people suffering from war in Ukraine, the other part remains to the artist.
Ukrainian Charity Exhibitions is a non-profit organization whose main goal is to promote and support Ukrainian artists abroad and in the current war circumstances to make the input into the rehabilitation of military and civilian citizens of Ukraine who suffered as a result of Russian military aggression.
You can also see the exhibition catalogue in here.