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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HISTORIC INDUSTRIAL SITES: THE CASE OF WESSERLING

18-22 SEPTEMBER 2023
WESSERLING
(Alsace-France)

In the presence of:
– Professor Pierre Fluck, French academic, specialist in the history of techniques and industrial archaeology (16th – 19th centuries)

– Mr Laurent Thomasin, Architect DPLG Associate, president of the Groupe 5-Cinq and 5-Cinq Architecture
– Mr François Tacquard, President of the Wesserling Park Association

Program: Visit of Wesserling, works of Le Corbusier (Notre Dame du Haut) and Renzo Piano (Convent of the Poor Clares), master class, etc.

contact: aurelieboquien@gmail.com

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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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ABOUT ME
Curiosity and desire pushed me to travel through Tuva, Buriatia, Siberia, Tajikistan and  Xinjiang – going farther and even farther.
And even when I thought  I was in the middle of nowhere, I realized that what touches me the most is the connection with human beings. Their faces are my inexhaustible source of inspiration.
There’s a story behind every face I paint. I can’t stop telling it.
Inge H. Schmidt

http://ihs-art.com/wordpress/?lang=en

„All of her images are stations of involvement and somnambulistic, nightmarish visions that certainly don’t lack wrath, perplexity and even anarchistic wit.
Eva-Susanne Bayer / Main Post

The very first minute I saw Inge H. Schmidt’s paintings I was immediately spellbound by the explosive, vulcanic element of her depicted images. One can say that this energy virtually blows up the realistic form.
Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Gauger

„I passionately draw – it’s simply who I am.
It flows naturally and completely takes over my body and spirit. It has been the main focus of my work during the last years. The craft develops continously.  „Going back to an earlier stage“ doesn’t work – it’s just like love.“
From my studio talk with Veit Stiller / Die Welt

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Through the eyes of cinema, the participants were invited to explore the topic of man’s identity, identity which, in essence, is defined by relations, an ontological «we». Rubén de la Prida Caballero, Spanish film critic , who conducted a 3-day workshop during the residency, shares his opinion on the short films made by the participant.

To view the videos, click on the name of the movie or go to the Vimeo-Catenart account: 

An international group of young artists gathered together between February 5^th and 17^th in Berlin, in parallel to one of the most important Film Festivals of the world: the Berlinale. The critic signing these lines had the pleasure and unexpected gift of sharing with them some reflections and thoughts about the way of expressing the problematics of identity through the means of expression of filmic form and language. When watching the works they performed during their stay in Berlin, one can only wonder about the amount of talent put at the disposal of true art, in an attempt of answering through beauty the most decisive of all questions: who am I?

Among the movies presented there are some that describe with precision the identity of some individuals like Oksana and Feelings (Sofiya Lupul), a joyous sensual look at one of the artists (Oksana Fedchyshyn) with a seamless junction between form and content, or Two Portraits (Denys Struck), an oneiric piece of harmonic contrasts taking the most authentic gestures of two of the participants (Sofiya Lupul and Darya Paschenko), showing their respective personalities through slight movements that appear like a tender dance of the both women with their own lives and the beauty itself. Denys Struck is also the author of Nobody, the most narrative of all works presented, a postmodern short film noir about the fragility of relationships in the digital world. Some other works reflected on the issues of group identity and the matter on individuality and distinction, like i (Arthur Soletskyi), which makes a surprising exploration on the possibilities of the soundtrack, Same The Same (Marta Trotsiuk), an approximation to the topic of identity with a provocative and powerful aesthetic, close to the art of videoclips, blur (Galya Boyko), a free piece of art that would have delighted -and maybe is inspired by- John Cassavetes or Béla Tarr, or the original stop-motion work Sheeps (Marta Melnykovych). Other artists decided to get inspired by the global identity of the city of Berlin itself, deeply analyzing the impact of the big city on the individual perception of self. Among them we find Moon (Oksana Fedchyshyn), an impacting short movie about the contrast between the times of nature and the times of men,  the movie Timewill say nothing but i told you so by Myroslava Klochko, an amazing piece of associative editing of picture and soundtrack worth the best of Peter Greenaway, I’m Ghost (Serhiy Savchenko), a fresh colorful mixture of real image and animation playing constantly with the smile of both the viewer and the unexpected actors, and the masterpiece Noise (Darya Paschenko), a visual poem about the need of peace and harmony in the gray stressed noisy life of the big city.

Besides these works the artists made some group movies full of experimentation, showing once again that art and creation are inseparable of having fun and breaking the limits of the represented. One can only expect to see some of these young artists once presenting their works at the Berlinale itself. They have much to tell the world through their art. In some of them the seeds of geniality, of permanence, of the bubbling of new filmic languages are present, and need to be developed. For the sake of cinema. For the sake of art. For the sake of beauty.

Rubén de la Prida Caballero, master of film criticism, ECAM (Escuela de Cine de Madrid) ; film critic, writes for Caimán Cuadernos de Cine (former Cahiers du Cinéma Espagne); Professor at the University of Carlos III in Madrid

To see more videos:
Asya Gefter (UK)
Arthur Soletsky (Ukraine)
Camila Rioseco (Chili)
Daria Pashchenko (Ukraine)
Denys Struk (Ukraine), Nod
Galyna Boyko (Ukraine), Biswhen, Terсофі
Marisol Crawford (USA)
Marta Melnykovych (Ukraine)
Myroslav Klochko (Ukraine), Plus one
Marta Trotsiuk (Ukraine)
Nina Gross (Österreich)
Oksana Fedchyshyn (Ukraine)
Serhiy Savchenko (Ukraine)
Sofia Lupul (Ukraine)
Juan Pablo Asanza Colmont (Equador)

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Berlin , 5-10 & 10-17 February 2019

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A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE

Join an international group of artists for a 10-day workshop in Lviv, Ukraine, from June 20-30, 2018. This residency will include:

• Encounters with some of Ukraine’s most creative artists
• An introduction to the centuries-old tradition of iconography
• Discovery of LVIV, a 13th century UNESCO World Heritage Site
• Times of fellowship, meditation and cultural visits
• A 5-day workshop in the Carpathian mountains at Creative Residence MC 6
• Optional: attend daily mass and experience the beauty of Eastern liturgy
• Optional: 2 days of visits and encounters in Kiev (not included in fee)
• And much more!

HOW TO APPLY?

The residency is open to artists of all disciplines and backgrounds, with a graduate degree or a record of past shows, and at least one year of studio work. To apply, send your resume (incl. degrees, past and upcoming shows, studio experience) and portfolio to contact@catenart.ch. An answer will be given within ten business days of your application. Participation will be secured upon reception of registration fee.

Registration fee: $300 / Support fee: $400 (incl. housing, half-board, on-site transportation and visits).

A detailed program will be sent to all participants.

For more information: contact@catenart.ch

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In the words of their mentor, Serhiy SAVCHENKO, speaking about his own experience, to be an artist means « to keep one’s soul open and free. »

And for that, what better place than Berlin? A city highly cultivated, it was inflicted such deep physical and mental wounds that one might have thought they’d be lethal. The scars themselves proved fruitful.

I was honored to play a piece of piano for the participants of the residency in the dazzling setting of our friends’ Judith and Jan Montag’s apartment. I was impressed by the quality of their silence, so different from the empty presence of so many blasé audiences.

The final exhibition of all the works created in Berlin offered an intense and deeply moving visual conclusion to the residency. It was permeated with a warm atmosphere of friendship between of those present.

Accompanied by an Iranian musician and his thousand-year-old string instrument, our hosts’ daughter, Helena Montag, led us with her flute on a dream-like and fantastic journey –yet another one! A fleeting moment of true communion between the artistic form and its interpreters…

I am full of gratitude for these young artists who brought us such deep and rare emotion. We left Berlin different, richer.

Philippe Languin

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Graduate and PhD student of Lviv National Academy of Arts (Ukraine),  Yarina obtained a grant in the program « Gaude Polonia » of the Minister of Culture of Poland (2013), Resident of the Poznan University of Art at the Faculty of Sculpture and Spatial Actions. She took part in sevenal Ukrainian and international exhibitions and performance art festivals in Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Germany, Latvia, Norway, Israel, Japan, Thailand, USA. Yarina is multidisciplinary: painting, performance art, installation and dance. She is particulary interested in researching of the spaces with human presence, looking for situations that reveal dual reality, the ambiguity of certain items, places, situations.

« In my works, I explore the nature and specifics of certain environments, spaces, and objects, when the concept of « presence » provokes changes in the primary significance of the places and situations. I’m interested in the subject of a person who is in a state of hesitation and uncertainty, in revealing of the double reality and the notion of ambiguity. My works are connected to the environment. Each new place includes special environment, the community that creates a new situation. It gives a possibility to feel the local life. »

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