“Contemplation” is the second version, or rather a continuation, of the project “BETRACHTUNG”, presented in 1997 at the Kharkiv House of Artists.
Unlike the previous version of the project, this exhibition is more closely connected with a specific place, namely my residence outside the city in the settlement of Vysokyi.
Private houses predominate in the settlement, but Vysokyi mainly remains a recreational and health resort area, where natural landscapes, forests, ponds, lakes and gardens contribute to peace of mind and a contemplative mood. Skovoroda traveled here, and Hnat Khotkevych wrote his works here…
Among the numerous boarding houses, pioneer camps, orphanages and former manor houses, many are abandoned, neglected and partially ruined. But it is precisely this neglect and abandonment, resembling “classical ruins”, with shepherds and herds of goats and cows, and people diving from rope swings against the backdrop of a Poussin-like man-made landscape and pretentious new developments, that intensifies the poetic mood.