Alexander Zhyvotkov

Keep the Roots

09.18 – 10.25

An artist like Oleksandr Zhyvotkov could have appeared only here - on the territory of Ukraine at the turn of the millennium. The depth and uniqueness of his works can be compared only with the occurrence of archaeological strata somewhere in the steppes of the Great Meadow. Just as the driving forces of history sometimes confuse the traces of different cultures, Zhivotkov unites in artistic practice the heritage of ancient European and Eastern civilizations. Polovtsian idols distant in time and space, Trypillia ceramics and Ukrainian folk icon, art of early Christian catacombs and Fayum portrait, Georgian funerary stelae and Tibetan manuscripts appear through each other in Zhyvotkov's multilevel works. Such relationship with cultural heritage could arise only in an artist who measured the path of the modernists of the twentieth century. Zhyvotkov's works are by no means a blind repetition of the artifacts of archeological collections. He interprets the archaic language of expression in confident hard lines, deaf saturated colors and sensual forms of repetitive symbols: dove, female outline, circle, tree and cross. This is the way of interpretation, as in Giacometti - Egyptian sculpture, and in Picasso and Modigliani - African art.

Stedley Art Foundation presents Oleksandr Zhyvotkov's "Keep the roots" project, in which the artist studying the symbols of ancient cultures, rethinks them through artistic practice, where they look both as a relevant statement and as a message from ancient times. The project is based on the works of the last five years - an incredible period in the richness and beauty of the rich creative biography of the artist. Conventionally, we can call it the period of "wood and stone". Over the years, Zhyvotkov has accumulated a sufficient supply of confidence and plastic freedom to abandon the canvas and oil - materials familiar, comfortable, guaranteed to be as effective ... as they bind, limit the artist in expression, and the viewer - in perception. At first glance, in Zhyvotkov's works the material component attracts attention, because to a large extent these are heavy oak boards and - not even stones - pieces of untreated rock. But, looking closely, you stop noticing it, because the rough material becomes a solid basis for the manifestation of the unique figurative-plastic language of Zhyvotkov, confirming the principle: the material for the artist is secondary, the primary - the desire to create.