"RESTRICTIONS": GRAFFITI-MASTERS AND THEIR WORLD IN THE NEW PROJECT OF JURIY SOLOMKO
28.01-15.02.2010

Kyiv, Thursday, the 28th of January, 19.00 - Collection Gallery opens a new personal project of the classic of modern Ukrainian art Juriy Solomko "Restrictions". The heroes of the project are be the graffiti-artists and the world whose boundaries they try to overstep to create their own world. In his new works Solomko explores the theme of graffiti as a phenomenon that appeared in the city blocks of Los-Angeles in the 70s and today occupied the whole world. Graffiti-masters become especially interesting because their art has a symbolic meaning that allows to compare it with the world map. The author thinks about the abstractness of the boundaries of the modern vulnerable world that constantly changes, about its color gamma, about those who stays beyond its changes.
The project is especially interesting because of the expressive way of Solomko's art who in spite of love to different media sees his works through the eyes of the graffiti-artists: here is the contrast between the rational contours of the political maps and the lively emotional art of the graffiti-artists.
Juriy Solomko, the author of the exposition: "In the new project it was important for me to show how abstractive is even the most detailed world map. I'm still interested in the world of young people that change the reality as they want. That is why the graffiti-artists become a new symbol of changes and freedom and the way they create new boundaries of the world by "limiting" it. I'm interested in the symbolism of the color of political map and the symbolism of the colors in the graffiti-art. In one of the works I'm also hinting at the traditional way of the development of the art that the iconography school could go, and the global world where there are all the chances to lose own identity. I specially use the pop-art methods to uncover not the ideality but the venality of some hero-countries of the world..."
Juriy Solomko entered "the new wave" on the edge of 80-90s but differed because of the absence of the dynamics and the vitality of the image of human being. In his cycle "ElementaryLayer" he addressed the inorganic objects. From the beginning of the 90s addressing the human figure he chose the method of quotations and appropriation but created his know-how: image was not on canvas but on the geographical map of world. According to the words of critics "people on the works of Solomko are hundreds of times bigger and stronger than the continents." The author became well-known due to the series of photo-works, in particular "The Planet of People", "Regeneration", where the body used in the process of masquerade game becomes a plastic prosthesis that breaks out of the phantom - the beauty of tragic and ugly. In his next projects, "Meta-geography" in particular, he combined geography with culture and history multiplying them by the most famous Ukrainian stereotypes. In his next projects, "G8" in particular, the author thinks about the globalization in the world governance, combining children's faces with the metropolitan maps of the most powerful capitals in the world.
The work of Juriy Solomko "The red graffiti-artist" was recently sold for nearly $ 9.000 on the most authoritative auction of the contemporary art Philips de Pury & Co, that took place in London.
The opening of the exhibition will take place on the 28th of January, as usual on Thursday, at 19.00 at the address: Kyiv, vyl. Pankivska, 8, Collection Gallery. More information, commentaries and reproductions you can get from Daryna Zholdak, the director of the Y. Kogutyak's gallery "Collection" on zholdak@collectiongallery.com.ua or zholdak@gmail.com by the tel.: 067 401 12 01