It is high time for them to be annulled as they don’t allow to have fun from simple perception of reality.
It is hopeless to get to their genuine basics, as these signs diligently hide them.
They no longer have any mystery or depth. After all, they make you fall asleep!
I reject the signs that "were always there". The reality screams at us from totally different places. So, I run away from everything defined and draw "other" signs while running away.
I observe such symbolic or iconic things as birth, death, sex, comfort, fear, and the forbidden in combination with simple, banal feelings, I superimpose the ordinary on the awesome or vice versa. Moving not along, but as if through reality, I string together the momentary, accidental, unconscious, important, unimportant, forgotten... All of that – without the slightest hint of the significance or meaningfulness of a particular situation or object. In this way, I try to structure the sluggish mass of daily life, to add sensual and physical to the trivial. I try to make everyday life more weighty by revealing joints, muscles, and cartilage within its thick, soft body.
44 works – 70 x 50
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It is possible to say that I draw some traps for the meanings, not necessarily hoping to catch anything. My signs remind me of balls – as soon as you arrange convenient holes for them, they cheerfully jump out of these halls, occupying places they like. They are not attached to their signifieds, but at the same time, they hold them in their own magnetized field. Due to such ‘wireless' communication, it is not always possible to extract the meaning from the signs, but thanks to our sensuality, we can still somehow reach them.
That is why I extract new signs from the body. (Literally, I almost always focus on anything directly related to the senses. Anything I can use to touch or taste the world.) These are always sensory fragments of reality or even the body of reality. The body is usually extremely vulnerable and changeable – my signs are vulnerable and changeable too. It's no use hoping to stop them because the sign disappears as soon as I see it, and the body starts to offer a dozen others. The body is always imperfect, when accomplished, the body is dead. Normal signs are accomplished, but mine are not so they can easily be turned into anything.
They could be compared with statements, however, they immediately run away from the dictates of the word. The language is too abstract compared to the absolute materiality of the sign, which seems to seep through the words. The core of the sign or its signified no longer needs to be translated into the language of words. The sign is valuable in itself. Removed from linguistic chains and deprived of any dependencies, it becomes an inexhaustible source of assumptions, guesswork, and meanings. Undoubtedly, the way of perception depends on the individual views of the perceiver... On many things. However, this private quality of the sign can make it resist the general system of language, which is becoming more and more dead.
4 works – 200 x 150
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I forcibly limit my signs and surround them with emptiness, they are always fragments. The process of their creation is never accumulation that leads to misappropriation or dissipation of signs. It is more of a constant subtraction, painting black "nothing" over everything redundant. The lack is what sharpens the senses, condenses them. I try to deprive my signs of everything that burdens or masks their essence, that makes them heavy and drags them into the mundane. The signs should be festive, provoke a feeling of pure joy without any hopes of making a profit, of hunting for the meaning.
They have a lot in common with flashes on a movie screen. Or with a salute. You manage to grasp them only in fragments, in pieces, because there is always not enough time for them to finally reach the end, to get some certainty, to emerge. Only the momentary nature of fireworks remains, when most of everything seen is not apprehended but simply continues to stand in front my eyes. My signs are like a gift that allows me to get involved in the continuous process of receiving messages from the world. (Vlada Ralko, Kyiv, 2008)
Signs, Bereznitsky Gallery, Berlin
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Signs. Art-Kyiv, Mystetskyi Arsenal, 2009
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