This is the second CatenArt art event taking place in Barcelona thanks to the fruitful collaboration with Pigment Gallery and its dynamic owner Ferràn Josa. Ferràn has decided to offer CatenArt the space of its gallery each September to exhibit young artists selected by the association.

The space is excellent for our purpose. The artists were very satisfied to exhibit their works since the light and the walls are very appropriate for such an exhibition. The “accrochage”, two days before the opening was a moment of friendly and happy gathering with Ferràn, Vasyl, Uliana and myself.

The opening was a success. Many friends and some artists assisted and discovered the works of both our artists. Vasyl and Uliana explained their works and answered to all questions. I felt a real bonding in the assistance.

The exhibition will be opened til the end of September.

I seize the opportunity first to thank Ferràn for his commitment to work together with CatenArt. I also like to thank you the Miramar Hotel management for allowing us to exhibit our young artists. And finally I am also thankful to Vasyl and Uliana for coming to Barcelona from so far away, Lviv. But I am particularly happy to to know that both were so interested in discovering and appreciating my home town.

—

Vassyl Savchenko

Nowadays we live our life, filled with the expectation of something. We start to forget who we are and why we exist. The «Human Expectative» is an unfinished concept of the body and mind, connected to the anthropoids. In a contemporary world we speak only about ecology, artificial intelligence, cosmos, but, start forgetting about human. The main idea is to present the dialog between a science and art in the contradicting way of art media.

Uliana Kulchitska 

Reading the Swaab’s book ‘We are our brains’ the Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) brought my attention. It got me curious since earlier I had a reflection on the absence in every aspect of existence. Actually, absence is always associated with something negative in society. After discovering about the BIID, I have looked from another perspective on it. It opened the way for further reflections. Everything you will see is the result of passing this information through my own experience.

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Paul Evdokimov famously wrote that “abstract art originates from iconography, Islamic arabesques, and the transcendental.” If Malevich made this affinity clear enough, Olena Smaha gives us a fresh understanding of this connection while still holding on to the figurative dimension of icons. 

How can we follow the flow of tradition in a world that does not subscribe anymore to its codes? How can the eternal light that bathes the sacred figures reach down to us, when our daily lives are constantly bruised by gratuitous violence, as witnessed everyday in Ukraine, and recently too in Barcelona?

Olena’s icons are, from this point of view, deeply relevant. It is always tempting for an artist to reproduce the forms that made sense in the past, but Olena Smaha found the way to an authentic new language — and the word “language” is not used lightly, since an icon is written and not painted. Iconography is about writing the Word.

Even though the human figure is predominant in her icons, nothing is more foreign to Olena’s work than a fascination for the sensible nature of things. The written elements and the archetypical look of her figures remind us that the iconic similitude is always ruled by the hypostasis (the person) and its already-spiritualized body. Nudity, for instance, acquires here its full meaning, even though it is traditionally banned from the canons of sacred art. In reference to the Son of Man exposed to the crowd’s humiliations, the body recovers the sacramental meaning it had in its original innocence. Contemplated in this light, it acquires a symbolic dimension opening up to the person in its entirety.

A number of details, such as the rose-colored cheeks (betraying the inner workings of love) or the use of verbal icons, show how seriously the artist is committed to the ancient tradition of Slavic iconography, when Kiev was the heart of Russia. Luz was undoubtedly one of the most important works in the exhibition at Pigment Gallery. While its formal composition follows the canons of the most ancient representations of the Transfiguration, it is also, in a certain way, revolutionary. Indeed, the boldness of the characters’ depiction, the seemingly chaotic ballet of lines (sometimes bordering on “rough art”), the expressive contrasts and the overload of undecipherable graffiti pay homage to street art.

This aspect of Olena’s work is what most manifests her responsibility as an artist. If you look at the ancient icons kept in Lviv, you will see that common people often engraved their names on their golden background. These engravings are an expression of devotion, the freedom of love overcoming the distance imposed by the sacred. On their rugged piece of wood, devoid of any aesthetic self-indulgence or seduction, the figures seem to lean in our direction (they use the traditional “inverted perspective” of icons) with an inexpressible pain. The work of clarification is performed with such intense perfection that each image seems, at the same time, the expression of a cry and of a supernatural love.

The simultaneous perception of a suffering echoing in eternity and of an inviting tenderness construes the true meaning of salvation and beauty, even though the beauty at stake is a wounded beauty. The contemporary man, especially when he experiences suffering, can no longer be satisfied by the empty aesthetic, sweet or dry, of canonical rules and ideas. He needs a naked presence, in its simplicity, in its uncompromising message. He needs being. Love alone can offer this, as it brings together knowledge and adoration, word and silence, beyond the dead ends of power and utilitarianism, and endowing the sacred with its most urgent performative dimension.

Many artists use forms in order to achieve an aesthetic result attuned to their tastes or to the expectations of their time, but very few are those who open for us the deepest recesses of their soul. These are the ones who truly enable us to perceive the crux of our time. At this point in history, Olena’s works seem to prophesies the destruction of our world and its re-foundation in mercy.

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My first encounter with her was not only about painting but about our own life experiences and personal convictions. It was definitely very enriching for both of us.

I then contemplated her paintings and immediately understood the message Tere was conveying through her works. There was a very human dimension in all of them, but not only because many of them were portraits. In fact all portraits were like surrounded by a specific landscape that seemed to fit the persons represented. I asked Tere about her feelings in this respect. She reacted immediately by saying that it was all about « fusion ».

A few months later i asked Tere to make a tryptic of my three sons. She was enthousiastic about the project. She asked them what environment, landscape, place they liked most. They first said the Costa Brava but finally prefered to have Barcelona. Tere visited us in Geneva and Barcelona several times. She took many photos of them. A few months later we got the tryptic. It was gorgeous ! The three boys were very impressed and ready to take with them their own portrait but finally decided to leave it at home. They were happy to see themselves together.

I have been following Tere’s evolution and can state that she has reached a very high level of maturity in her work.

Tere has expressed interest in the principles of promoting art at CatenArt, our Swiss association. She is very welcome. We hope we can develop further through our international events young artists who believe in their way that art is a tool of peace and human values.

Xavier Gonzalez Florenzano

https://youtu.be/U0rBRCCfdxM   Fusionismo

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