Today, Oct. 5^th, 19:00, new shows are opening at both spaces of Ya Gallery (Я Галерея) in Kyiv. The works of Volodymyr Kostyrko will be shown in the space at Volosska street, while the gallery at Khoryva str. will be home to the display of works by Olga Oliinyk and Roman Dubrovskiy, as part of the New Naive («Новий Наїв») project.

In his project The Hand of the Master. Artists’ criminal stories, Volodymyr Kostyrko tries to demystify the romantic image of an artist by presenting us with ‘the private life’ of Caravaggio, Cellini, Longhi, Torrigiani, Perugino… He wants to remind us that apart from holding a paint-brush, an artist’s hand also very often holds on to a bottle, a knife, a revolutionary banner.

 

New Naïve is a type of cultural submersion. It is a search for the basics, the motifs, the reasons for visual- and self-expression. Unstained by formal education, the pure energy and happiness of the works presented here come close to those of primitive art. Birds, springs, countryside houses – all of these perfectly fit into the idea of a naïve artist’s view of the world. After all, this is what he or she grew up surrounded by, far away from the life of a big city.

One doesn’t need to turn to Chinese national-modernism in search of a ‘fresh’ look on things. New Naïve’s aim is to prove exactly that, since all over Ukraine there are so many people who never went to art-schools, but still feel a need to visualize their thoughts and dreams and images from inside their heads. And one doesn’t have to come from a small remote village, it is quite possible to be ‘naïve’ while living in the city and listening to the sound of buses or trams instead of nightingale’s songs.

 

Other artists, who’s work has already been shown as part of the New Naïve project, include Iryna Garshyna, Roman Gromov, Roman Dubrovsky, Dmytro Kuzovkin, Oleksandr Lutsenko-Baban, Oleksandr Liapin and Oleksandr Nayden. This time the Ya Gallery is proud to present the works of Olga Oliinyk and Roman Dubrovsky.