We would like to conclude our series of posts about the gallery’s third year with a story about three Kharkiv artists: Alexey Borisov, Taguhi Barseghyan and Vadim Petrov. All of them became regular artists of the gallery. For example, until November 27, 2021, 22 years later, you can see Vadim Petrov’s new exhibition “Facades and Backyards of the Metropolis” at the Municipal Gallery.
In October 1999, Vadim Petrov’s conceptual exhibition “The Return of the Hero” opened.
The artist’s works became a response to the public demand for the emergence of a certain national hero, a Dragon Slayer. However, on the canvas, the hero’s horse was dismembered by the artist in the manner of diagrams showing how beef carcasses are cut up in grocery stores. The hero himself, meanwhile, was deprived of his head.
In 2000, Vadim Petrov’s exhibition was shown again, this time at the Atelier Karas Gallery in Kyiv.
“Arrhythmia – 1332216330” was the title of an exhibition by Kharkiv artist Alexey Borisov, a member of the experimental association “Litera A.”
It was a kind of creative diary documenting the artist’s previous two years.
The exhibition consisted of around 40 paintings on paper and cardboard, created using chalk, enamel and gouache. Borisov’s works are imbued with symbolism, signs and meanings. They reflected the states the artist experienced on particular days, his emotional, psychological and physiological experiences.
In March 1999, the exhibition “The World of Taguhi Barseghyan” opened at the Municipal Gallery. At that time, the artist from Armenia had already been living and working in Kharkiv for four years.
Her painting is a private reflection on the world, hidden from the eyes of others. The characters in Taguhi Barseghyan’s works are dolls participating in life as if in a performance, a theatrical production, seemingly confirming Shakespeare’s famous saying that all the world is a stage. The theatricality of Taguhi’s works is also emphasized by the stylized features of the characters and heightened by their pallor, as though the white theatrical makeup separates them from the viewer.
