July 1, 6.00 pmThe Kendrew Barn Gallery, St John’s College, Oxford OX1 3JP
At most solo exhibitions, the artist’s fate and life journey remain hidden behind the paintings. This time, we will attempt to create a portrait of the artist through performance.
Oleksandr Dubovyk is not only a recipient of the “National Legend of Ukraine” award; he is an artist of international stature and an individual of extraordinary scale. His life itself reads like a chronicle – a unique reflection of nearly a century of his country’s history: the execution of his father, a poet of the Executed Renaissance; the stigma of being branded the “son of an enemy of the people”; decades of ideological pressure under the totalitarian Soviet regime; years of neglect; the struggle for inner freedom and the right to remain true to himself; and life in wartime Kyiv during the full-scale war.
Despite the dark periods he endured, Dubovyk never lost his inner orientation towards Light. This inner axis, which has shaped both his life and his art, became the point of departure for Fedir Vozianov’s fashion performance Oleksandr Dubovyk: A Dynamic Portrait in Seven Acts and Four Dimensions.
The performance is built around only two colours: black and white. And only one form: a rectangle that gradually decreases in size. With this deliberately limited visual vocabulary, Fedir Vozianov creates a dynamic portrait of Oleksandr Dubovyk against the backdrop of an era in which the artist chose the role not so much of a witness as of a challenger.
His own path toward creative independence intersects dramatically with the historical path of Ukraine; his personal tragedies echo the large-scale tragedies of his country. Yet his persistent journey from darkness towards Light remains unceasing.
Free entrance