COMPRESSION is a good word; it implies handmade, “masculine” work. The explosive energy of a spring, the pulsation of hot blood in a clenched fist. A scorching harvest, where every tiny grain is a carrier of centuries-old information. A conglomerate of thoughts, turbulent emotions, secret memories.

In this project, Volodymyr Starikov presents color collages, laconic, self-sufficient, at times reaching the simplicity of a sign, and small black-and-white sheets resembling printed graphics. But the author, in the old-fashioned way, executed them with ink and a pen (and thereby put the computer devil to shame).

As Mikhail Epstein stated: “Poetry is NOT an outpouring of content, not a gush of water, but a squeezing of content from form, as from a sponge. And the stronger the compression, or, in Tynyanov’s terminology, the tighter the verse line, the more the poem is charged with poetry.”

Nina Vinogradova

Volodymyr Starikov is a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine, the author of seven solo exhibitions; his works are held in the Zimmerli Art Museum (New Jersey) and in private collections in Germany, Italy, Israel, and Russia.