Icon Art: Visions of a World Unseen

The Ukrainian Institute of America is pleased to announce a selling group exhibition of 18 artists from Ukraine, “Icon Art: Visions of a World Unseen”. Organized in cooperation with Iconart Gallery of Contemporary Sacred Art, Lviv, Ukraine, the exhibition draws from the work of Ukrainian artists associated with the Ukrainian Gallery. Independently working in different media – painting, drawing, metal work, ceramics and glass – the artists focus on spiritual and religious concerns within the contemporary cultural context in which they live.

The artworks – both representational and abstract – visualize ties between rituals of medieval religious iconography and current interpretations of the sacred. This group of artists are brought together through shared origins in Ukrainian spiritual culture and their respective intimate experiences. Their works are centered on the creation of images of the “world unseen”: a Sinner in search of Paradise, Man in search of God, Heroes and Seducers, Saints and Traitors, and God in search of Man.

Most of the artists are exhibiting for the first time in the United States. Spanning multiple gener- ations, some commenced their creative practices forty years ago working outside of official then-Soviet mandates, while others entered the Ukrainian art arena in the past decade, influenced by contemporary culture and recent political events.

Exhiting artists include: Olexander Antoniuk, Olexander Bryndikov, Ivanka Demchuk, Oleh Denysenko, Petro Humenyuk, Olga Kovtun, Ola Kravchenko, Ivanka Krypyakevych-Dymyd, Olexander Kudryavchenko, Ostap Lozynsky, Mykola Molchan, Danylo Movchan, Uliana Nyshchuk-Borysyak, Natalia Rusetska, Yuriy Smolsky, Yaroslava Tkachuk, Luba Yatskiv, Roman Zilinko.

The Iconart Gallery in Lviv, Ukraine, established in 2009, specializes in the contemporary artistic interpretation of spiritual topics, reconsidering this important issue in today’s cultural context. In the past five years, the gallery has developed a network of artists throughout Ukraine, with a substantial body of work. It is the only gallery of contemporary sacred art in Ukraine that focuses primarily on the spiritual, religious dimensions of contemporary art. Since its opening in 2010, the gallery has organized more than 60 exhibitions and events that were dedicated to the spiritual problems of modern Ukrainian culture, and have presented works by several generations of artists of various styles and techniques. All of these work are inspired by Christian culture and personal spiritual experience of the artists.