VASYL BAZHAJ
UNTITLED – THE ART OF VASYL BAZHAJ
NEW YORK, March 30, 2007 -- The Ukrainian Institute of America is pleased to announce a rare U.S. showing of paintings by one of Ukraine’s most significant and celebrated abstractionists, Vasyl Bazhaj. An opening reception, will be held at the Institute on Friday, April 13th from 6-8 p.m.
The exhibit runs through May 6, 2007. It is comprised of 26 oils, all created in the last 20 years and including the large canvases that Bazhaj is particularly known for. A native and resident of Lviv in Western Ukraine, Bazhaj, 57, developed his artistic style in the late 1980s, when government censorship loosened and the artist was able to unleash his creative genius by furiously going on the offensive against a system that for decades had censored non-sanctioned artistic forms.
Starting as highly ecstatic symbolist artist in the middle of 80s, Vasyl Bazhaj transformed his style through typical examples of abstract expression to pure abstraction and even went further to neo-conceptual approach that was represented on his exhibitions at the end of 90s. Bazhaj always was interested not only in paintings, but also took intensive part in creating masterpieces of contemporary Ukrainian installation and performance art. Yet last years can be described as tribute to classic media of the Painting. Some new works represented on the exhibition are part of his last exhibition that took place just few weeks ago in Lviv.
What critics say:
“Vasyl Bazhaj is a ‘pure’ abstractionist, submerged in the controlled riot of color and form… impressions come from the richness and beauty of color and the variety and profoundness of the color harmony.”
-- Grigory Ostrovsky, Tel Aviv
“His large canvases emanated a mighty, gloomy force. His object-less compositions bore the stamp of geological or psychological shifts, struggles and strains. Like hardened lava, the fragments of pictorial forms seem to be thrown upon the canvas after melting in fire and then hardening in sullen rage into cold immobility.”
-- Dmytro Horbachov, Kyiv, Ukraine
“The mighty artistic temperament sounded in the lower registers of the large canvases, on which monumental architecture continued, developed and concentrated on the intense dynamics of the main movement-struggle. On the other hand, the most subtle nuances of color sounded in diminutive form. Here a single stroke of the brush acquired utmost significance.”
-- Olena Ripko, Lviv, Ukraine
“A definition of “semiotic art” appears in Vasyl Bazhaj’s experiments. It represents the pure idea of art, which is not a physic object, and even not a relation between object and subject, but (virtually) the image projected on the visual core of the spectator's mind. In Bazhaj's approach one can see not only double, but even triple representation of objects! The laws of perspective, of course, appear in different way then obviously… Ervin Panofsky noted that liner perspective is not only objective construction and that spatial relations can be realized in other forms.”
-- Roman Hankevych, Lviv, Ukraine