17-27 March 2025, Madrid

General presentation

The CatenArt association (Switzerland), Svitlo Gallery (Ukraine) and the Savchenko Foundation (Poland) are organizing an art residency that will take place in Madrid, one of the largest cultural and historical centers in Spain, and where the art of being together is cultivated. Under the guidance of various speakers*, participants will be invited to explore the theme: IMAGE AND WORD.

What are the paths of representation? What is permitted by the image, words, and the transitions from appearances to meaning?

The power of the image and the word liberates unexpected capacities of representation, leading to a representation intended to free man from the finitude of his temporal or spatial confinement. Throug h the concrete journey of the speakers (painters, sculptors, poets, film critics), participants will be invited in their exploration to release their creativity that transgresses the limits of appearance and represents the real meaning of things, drawing the map of the unknown in a gesture of inspiration. The theme of this residency will examine the deep reasons for these convergences.

SPEAKERS

Luis Ventos, painter, sculptor, Spain https://www.ventos-artist.com/

Ruben de la Prida Caballero, film critic – Spain

J Felipe Antonio Rojas Roman, poet, program coordinator for intervention with young migrants – Chile

Pablo Luque Pinilla, poet – Spain

TEAM

Serhij Savchenko artist, art director, founder of Savchenko Foundation – Ukraine-Poland https://savchenkogallery.com/en

Aude Guillet artist, curator of project- France

Olena Polischuk curator of Svitlo Gallery, coordinator of media and comunication – Ukraine https://www.instagram.com/svitlo.gallery

Who can apply to the workshop?

All visual artists with a graduate degree or a record of past shows, and at least one year of studio experience.

The residency program will alternate between individual and group work times in workshops (painting, graphic design, photo-video, performance, installation, photos, performances, writing), cultural visits (museums, galleries..) and meetings with certain artists from the city.

Program of the workshop

• Day 1: Welcome, presentation of the theme of the residency
• Days 2-9: Morning: Conference / meeting with speakers followed by analysis and discussion                                         Afternoon: creative time in small groups, visit to museum, city…

• Day 10: Presentation of the work
• Day 11: Closing of the residency, departure

Practical information

• Registration fee: 400 euros (Support 500 euros). Includes housing and half-board.
• Registration deadline: February 1.
• If you wish to attend part of the residency, you can register as a guest for a suggested fee of 150 euros.

To register or request further information, contact

Aude Guillet Curator and admnistrator aguillet.uk@gmail.com

Serhiy Savchenko Art director sawaart@gmail.com

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It so happens that a dear neighbour of mine in our place in Madrid, a French architect, Françoise Schneider, finds her origin in Alsace and more precisely in Wesserling, 35 km drive from Mulhouse. She then told me about the magnificent industrial wasteland of Wesserling that goes back to the 17^th century.

A short visit early January allowed me to think about the possibility of organizing a residency for young architects around the subject: destroying versus restoring an old industrial site.

Thanks to the enthusiastic and committed participation of Françoise to the project, we could organize the residency which took place from the 18^th to 22^nd of September in the Wesserling center.

Finally 18 participants of which 8 young architects assisted to the residency. They came from Germany, Spain, France, Peru, Romania and Ukraine. The masterclass took place during 2 days and 2 more days were also devoted to a workshop and prepare the renovation of a specific building in the center.

The masterclass were given by Mr Laurent Thomassin and Pr. Pierre Fluck (university of Mulhouse). The worskshop was conducted by Pr. Isabel Sardon (Madrid Polytechnic).

Mr François Tacquard, president for the Wesserling Center led the participants in a site tour.

A final conclusion of this residency was to consider always the importance of “destroy less and construct little” since renovation and rehabilitation make sense from an historic and economic point of view.

The residency was a success since participants could learn from their stay and made contacts valuable.

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Lucas Reiner, a painter, engraver and photographer,  gave this interview for CatenArt. Since 2001, Lucas Reiner has focused on what he calls the « portrait » of curbside trees in his hometown, exploring the formal collision between organic growth and the constraints of modern urban life.

He is the one who will guide the next Residency in Gdanzk to explore the theme of freedom, its dynamism and its questioning of the ability to choose and engage.

Trees are the most important subject of your work. Can you tell us what they mean to you, and what it is you love about them?

Trees are rooted in the earth and grow to reach the heavens. As an idea, for me, trees represent a perfect connection of the earth and the heavens, the seen and unseen worlds. I am primarily interested in the infinite variety of forms that trees embody as a result of being shaped by time and by their environments. By looking in a naïve and unknowing way, I see the unique forms and qualities of each individual tree as something new, something that I’ve never seen before; a phenomenon waiting to be discovered or revealed. I see in their growth a metaphor for the human condition and our struggle to make peace with our environment and our destiny. I’m also fascinated with the countless ways that trees have been interpreted and used for so many origin stories, sacred writings and mythologies, signifying such a rich tapestry of ideas.

While walking through the woods in Michigan in 2001, I came upon an area of the forest that had been ‘clearcut’ and harvested by the paper company that owned the land. While walking through what had been a large area of mature Birch trees that was now reduced to acres of trunks, I became aware that underfoot I was walking on thousands of tiny trees the size of blades of grass that were beginning to grow. I was overcome with a feeling of time passing, creation and destruction, and how an organic, infinitely renewable resource can keep growing, in spite of the violence that it is subjected to.

Could you tell us a bit about your own roots, as a man, and as a painter?

On my father’s side of the family, my grandfather came from the Austro-Hungarian town of Czernowitz, (Chernivitsi) and my Grandmother was from Bucharest. On my mother’s side, my grandmother was from Warsaw, and grandfather from Königsburg. My mother and my father were born in New York city in the early part of the 20th century. I was born in Los Angeles. If geography is destiny, I am an American child of European history, a European soul in an American body.

My mother, Estelle Reiner, was a painter and through her I was introduced to the work of so many great European painters; Matisse, Braque, Picasso, Bonnard, Beckman, Morandi, as well as the American post-war painters that she loved: Pollock, Kline, Rothko, Alice Neel, Mark Tobey, Twombly and more.

Both my mother and I studied painting with a wonderful painter named Martin Lubner. I was fortunate to be exposed to the work of these painters in such a thoughtful way. The paintings were brought to life for me by the were passion that Marty was able to convey about the qualities that made the work so unique.

What do you think of the Catena Artistorum project?

Catena Aristorum Project is a great way for artists to come together, share discoveries and exchange inspirations and ideas. The pursuit of artists, like all of life, is so interconnected, but in a very specific way. As society becomes more and more mechanistic, it is important for artists to know that they are not alone in their pursuits. I’m honored to be invited and look forward to participating in the Gdánsk meeting.

What is, in your own experience, the relationship between art and freedom?

Art and freedom are both only possible in their ongoing relationship and negotiation with constraint.

I think of freedom as the engine that allows artists to travel further into new, unchartered and unknown areas; constructing a kind of a bridge to lead people into new sensations and insights.

There are some beautiful lines by Stravinsky about freedom in art that I would like to include in the meeting at Catena Gdánsk:

“My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.”

What message do you have for young artists ?

Stay connected to other artists and the history of art. This might help you realize that you are part of something much larger than yourself. Stay curious. Read, draw, write, look, learn. Art for the artist is a lifetime of work, and finding something that will sustain you is like a baby taking its first step. Be aware and watchful for the things that excite and inspire and speak to you. You don’t have to have a “big idea”, but you do need inspiration, and it can come from anywhere and anything at any time. Stay open to what is around you. Inspirations often appear as something slight or small, and can be easily ignored. Allow them in. Write it down, give it a voice, expose it, bring it into the light of day.

Don’t let your fears or your desire for your work to turn out perfectly inhibit you. Sometimes the imperfections, accidents and mistakes are the very thing that will make your work unique, or allow you to reach a new place.

Lucas Reiner

Los Angeles, 2020

HOME

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“Art is a form of resistance. And the principal subject matter of resistance is resistance against death.” Nicolas Bourriaud

Serhiy Savchenko’s series “Ruins and Reproduction” was created over a one-year period between 2018-2019. It consists of 6 large scale diptychs each portraying the landscape of major cities destroyed in World War II. The locations are Dresden, Coventry, Warsaw, Kyiv, Hiroshima, and Gdansk. The series’ permanent location is in the Savchenko gallery in Gdansk, Poland.

The six diptychs were created as part of a wider project entitled “Cities in the Context of Civilizational Conflicts” that took place in 2018 in Berlin, Germany. Each piece consists of two adjacent panels sized 180X 120 cm, with an overall size of 180 X 240cm.

Savchenko uses photographic references to create realistic yet highly abstracted images of the global catastrophe of civilisation on the macro level.  Yet the works are filled with the emotions of Romanticism embodied in his meticulous study of ruins as individually beautiful particles of disintegrated communities. The artist claims that wars destroy and depersonify any kind of identity. Everything becomes blurred. The series is created in such a manner that each individual piece of every diptych can be combined with any other piece in the series, thus emphasizing the magnitude of similarity of sites after the disintegration of their individual personal features.

Savchenko’s recognizable trademarks are his painterly technique and his personality as an artist. He employs a gestural expressionist manner to apply paint and intuitive combination of colors to create seemingly monochromatic images that on closer inspection reveal an astonishingly rich palette of color. Similar to Malevich’s famous Black Square, Savchenko’s blacks are quintessential combinations of almost all existing colors of the spectrum. The manner of painting is both innovative and controversial. He combines oil-based paints together with the antagonistic acrylic water-based paints to create cracks and flakes on his paintings, thus portraying the physical effect of destruction and disintegration generated by conflicting media.

Savchenko’s identity as an artist can be distinguished by his ability to produce a detailed and realistic image working in a completely abstract manner. He seems to be able to see his subject matter from both global and detail perspective. All his works are reflection of this powerful combination of talent and skill.

Almost sublime, the paintings afford views from the tall floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the modern skyscrapers down on urban landscapes as if they were archaeological sites designed for a study of the history of humanity. They also resemble the view from the future to the past where the viewer is situated in a certain present moment between past and future. Savchenko argues for the importance of the viewer’s active participation in art. He removes himself from the scene leaving the room for study and reflection. If art is a form of resistance against death, then Serhiy Savchenko’s art is definitely an important part of it.

Copyright 2019, Olena Grubb,

MAAB Sotheby’s Institute of Art

Redaction Nick Roth

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Erik Mai / Serhiy Savchenko

“War destroys and wipes out any kind of individuality. Savchenko’s paintings are about the city’s recognizable landscape that is transformed into a monotony of ruins that has no personality anymore. This is symbolic and inherent in today’s world: demolishing and equalizing personality as such.Erik Mai, by creating his dying warriors out of stone, gives individuality to every single stone.“

From a conversation with the artist Olena Turyanska

Erik Mai

Dying Warriors

To make myself aware of the duration of the First World War (1914-1918), I worked on 22 stone heads from 2014-2018. The number 22 is chosen after Andreas Schlüter, a German sculptor (1660-1714), whose 22 Dying Warriors can be found in the Berlin Zeughaus Unter den Linden.From some of my works, I moulded masks and had them cast in bronze and iron. While I was working and thinking about the war and how it happened, many military conflicts took place in the world and in Europe.Schlüter’s portrayals are also about heroism. I can’t do anything with that term.Erik Mai 2019

Serhiy Savchenko

Ruin and reproduction.

Ruin is a term with several meanings. Every government or country writes a story in its own way, so the story should not be understood but felt.A series of works that is based on original photographs of destroyed cities after World War II: Dresden, Coventry, Warsaw, Kiev, Hiroshima and Gdansk. 6 works, 6 cities, 6 stories, 6 ruins.

Destroyed cities created with oil and water-based paints, so conflicts between these two opposing substances cannot be avoided. The endless conflict of oil and water in the physical world should perhaps be the main key to reading this series. A conflict that sooner or later is doomed to historical fixation and reconciliation.Probably, the photos were taken from a high-flying airplane; it is always at altitude that the horizon line relative to the landscape is the same.

All the works are diptychs, and there is the impression as if the eerie landscape is contemplated from the window of a tall, mythical building.

An emotional, sensitive look at the dramatically set design of history by viewing the annihilated centres of civilization. A picture of the world that makes it possible to bring up to date the vision of a story that needs to be felt, not just understood.

Exhibition held in the « Savchenko Gallery » Gdanzk

http://savchenko.gallery/

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The project includes works by famous Ukrainian artists Oleksiy Khoroshko and Serhiy Savchenko.
The works of both artists united by one theme – the existence of matter (material) in the process and the existence process in the matter.
The artist consciously chooses material (matter) to create their own images, but the process of creation leads to a balance of liberty and by natural essence of matter. Art work in all cases is the result of interaction between these two important concepts. Process and matter, rationalization and intuition, plan and case – lead to extensive understanding of the field the author and viewer.
Oleksiy Khoroshko experiments for many years and works in technique fumegraphy. This is a special author’s technique which basis is to investigate the properties of fire.
His works have drawn by fire. It traces the fire in a fantastic patterns arranged in mega-system signs and hints.
Serhiy Savchenko works in oil and acrylic painting. His monumental planes of oil emails and varnish united in the expressive mix and erupt in rapid volumetric texture verticals. Pure virgin white canvas area littered with intuitive drawings-simbols contrasting with the silhouette of colored spots of paint.
Space of trajectories fire lines and author plan of Oleksiy Khoroshko, painting layers of living and arabesque figures of Serhiy Savchenko lead recipient in infinitely wide interpretative field.
Innovations approach to content based on the fundamental traditions of the Ukrainianavant-garde in the context of European culture can talk about a new word in the world of intuitive conceptualism.

Marianne Popkins

Academic of Arts Center of Galician Contemporary Art

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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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The Catena Artistorum — litteraly the “chain of artists” — is an organization that was created in 2016 by a group of curators and collectors, spearheaded by the colorful and multifarious Xavier Gonzalez-Florenzano, from Barcelona. All of them, living in places as diverse as New York, Lviv, Berlin and Geneva, made a similar observation: what artists lack the most — more than diplomas and grants — is a community, a place where they can belong, where they feel inspired and renewed in their vocation. The great majority of artists balance their unstable financial situation with temporary jobs, which makes for long working days and little time to cultivate such relationships. Furthermore, artists are often at odds with “ordinary people”, somewhat alienated by the mysterious nature of art and the excruciating demands it can make on an individual. In response to this need, the Catena Artistorum wove together, like a large patchwork, the networks that its founding members had already grown in a variety of cultural hubs. This “weaving” is what the CatenArt Residencies are all about, bringing artists together for two weeks of fellowship, work, studio visits and reflection.

Since 2014, such residencies have been held on the French riviera, in Barcelona, and last year in Berlin. A growing number of Ukrainian artists became part of the movement, so much so that it was decided that the 2018 residency would happen on the Ukrainian soil. The residency unfolded in two times: five days in the countryside, focused on fellowship and work, and five days in the city, focused on studio and other cultural visits. As soon as they gathered in Lviv, on the morning of June 20th, the 21 participants hopped in a bus and headed to the Creative Residence located above Slavski. Surrounded by the majestic beauty of the Carpathian mountains, the bulk of their time was dedicated to studio work, each artist developing freely his or her own practice: performance, installation, painting, photography, poetry, sculpture… One theme ran through the residency: Transfiguration, that brief and mysterious moment when everyday reality becomes transparent to divine beauty. Long periods of work were punctuated by times of relaxation and celebration, from the best of Ukrainian foods and drinks to the rythms of traditionnal Hutsul music. By the time we had to pack up and head back to the city, the large and light-filled studio was filled with drawings, sculptures and prints, and it seemed we had known each other for months !

The residency, however, was far from being over. The second part of the residency, in Lviv, would culminate on Thursday, June the 29th, with the opening, at the Scenography Gallery, of the exhibition of some of the works created the week before in the mountains. Contemporary icons by Olena Smaha and Natalia Satsyk (Ukraine), a stairway to heaven by Nezihe Karakaya (Turkey), meditative installations by Mihaël and Teresa Barabash (Ukraine), a short video by Graham Livingstone (US) transporting the viewer into a fog of light on top of a high mountain, a massive, upside-down, limestone head by Volodya Semkiv (Ukraine)… The works testified to the wealth of talents and artistic languages present at the residency, but also to the climate of friendship and contemplation that presided to their creation.

The second part of the residency was also rich in memorable studio visits and cultural events. Natalia Satsyk and Olena Smaha proved us that the ancient tradition of iconography is still very much alive in Ukraine and that it has the ability to integrate the language of contemporary art and the longings of contemporary man. Serhyi Savchenko introduced them to his explosive creativity in his studio, where his legendary appetite for life meets his deep sense of conflict and tragedy. Natalia Polovinka, the celebrated vocalist, actress, and founder of the “Word and Voice” theater, honored us with an intimate peformance, where byzantine liturgy and traditionnal folk songs point towards the same, transcendental beauty. Moved to the core by the beauty we saw and heard, we were reminded that, in spite of our cultural and social differences, we have the same heart and the same, deeper longings.

These friendships often result in impromptu collaborations. Last September, Olena Smaha exhibited her contemporary icons, whose visual language finds such a meaningful echo in Romanesque frescoes and in the works of Antoni Tapiès, at the Pigment gallery in Barcelona. Peforming artist Yaryna Shumska (also from Ukraine) was invited by John-David Mooney (American artist who took part in the Barcelona residency) to stay and perform at his foundation in Chicago this year in November…

Our 2018 residency in Lviv proved once again that the Catena Artistorum meets a real need, the human need of the artists to be part of something greater, something inspiring and life-giving. It also manifested what an important gift Ukraine has to offer to the art world. This is a soil where contemporary art is still irrigated, as it used to be in the West, by the rich Eastern liturgical tradition. We look forward to disseminating this gift further, as the Catena Artistorum continues to weave its web of enduring friendships between artists of all countries and traditions. We are looking forward, in particular, to our 2019 residencies. In February 2019, the Catena Artistorum will meet in Berlin during the annual film festival, for a two-week long encounter on the theme of “Cinema and Identity”, offering a multimedia workshop as well as encounters with profesionnals of the “7th art”. Another CatenArt Residency will take place that year, in June, in New York City. Stay tuned to our website or shoot us an email for more information.

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Here is a small video-souvenir of the residency:

Catenart Lviv 2018

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– “Why this cross on the top of the lemon?” What kind of an idea do you want to convey?

Justified as the question may be and willing as I am to always answer it, I do not like to explain my paintings. What stands at the origin of the act of creation is not an idea but an experience. An experience looks like an encounter. It’s impossible to explain an encounter without depriving it from a part of the mystery it carries. In order to express itself, the experience takes a shape: the very painting! Somehow, the painting is the best answer to the question it raises.

The painter Nicolas de Staël wrote: “One never paints what one sees or believes to see. One paints a thousand of vibrations, one paints that which struck ones.” As I see it, the work of the artist is to put into a sensitive medium, the essence of an experience that is, by nature, non-sensitive. The more the experience is real and intense, the truer it is, the more the proposal to enter into “that which strikes us” is significant and persistent. To try and explain an artwork through didactic reasoning is, in a way, to keep oneself away from the experience suggested by the artwork itself. To reduce art to a concept is to cut it off from its origin and its purpose. Saint Gregory of Nyssa ‘s “Only wonderment leads to true knowledge, concepts create idols.” suggests anew the stance we should take in front of reality – that is, the one of a child. I believe this holds particularly true when we contemplate a painting, read a poem, or listen to a Sonata (and even more so when we create them!)

A work of art is the shape through which the mystery seeks to be actualized. Since the origins of the human race, the strength and the very reason of art have been to offer a conversation with the mystery. People do not go to museums and concert halls only to get more knowledgeable or feel ephemeral emotions. Much deeper, the expectation to find a meaning and a presence leads them toward artworks as to the locus where leaving meaninglessness and loneliness behind is indeed possible. The artwork is, at its roots, this “set-apart-reality”, this sanctuary, which opens the person up to wonderment by the mere fact that it exists.

Frédéric Eymeri

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