Yura Koval | My Site

Yuriy Koval

One step ahead

The artistic practice of the painter Yuriy Koval is undoubtedly anthropocentric. The drama of the artist’s paintings is gradually unfolding: around the image of a person, through the portrayal of the body and its fragments, portraits and self-portraits, placed into different subject environments; as the story of observation and self-immersion, arguments about the integrity and harmony, conflict and destruction, the outline of zones of influence and comfort. Physicality in works of Koval acts not only as an aesthetic factor, but as a universal code, as an emphasis on the importance and vulnerability, the fragility of human life in general and the significance of each individual, their fears, aspirations, desires, taboos.

Just as a body can simultaneously symbolize defenselessness and strength, the artist builds his compositions on contrasts that increase the tension of a picturesque dance, he combines monochrome and warm nude colors, sharp angles of two-dimensional planes with soft and smooth volumes, a tumultuous object movements with a frozen void background.

By collaging objects, the author creates a kind of theatrical entourage, dramatic and sometimes absurd, but one that reflects the paradox of the world and the variety of circumstances that a person faces throughout life. The naturalistic depiction gives robots an eerie persuasiveness, immersing in contrasting unions of incompatible. In today’s intensive flow of information, different realities overlap, and it becomes almost impossible to distinguish real and fictitious, to find where exactly the reality benchmark actually is. The flow of disassembled shots in the works of Koval is like a flicker of images in the mind, which we encounter every day and what the information background is formed from, which inevitably affects everyone.

In his hyper-realistic paintings, Koval speaks of the body as a territory, as an alive space that has certain outlines and characteristics – with strengths and weaknesses, painful spots, injuries. Space can be common, controversial, open or isolated, with fixed or moving boundaries. Your own body is the only area the contours of which are safely outlined. But even this border is blurred and fragile. The outlines of the body are the visible physical boundaries of the inner, sacred and private space. Its movements are expansion into the surrounding space, its appropriacy, permanent establishment and destruction of territorial boundaries.

Natalia Matsenko

BIO

Born in Lviv, Ukraine

Education:
2004 Department of interior design, Lviv National Academy of Arts
1998 RAPS department of the Lviv College of Decorative and Applied Arts named after I. Trush

Personal Exhibitions:

2022 "Meanings of Answers", Zolotoe Peretyn, Kyiv
2020 "Fog", Mironov Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2018 "Disappearance/Manifestation", Karas Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2017 "Delineated territory", Zolotoe Peretyn, Kyiv / Dziga gallery, Lviv, Ukraine
2016 "Equilibrium", Sky Art Foundation, Kyiv, Ukraine
2014 "Old line - new line. Interaction", Hudgraf Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2014 "Landscapes. Grounds", Bunkermuz gallery, Ternopil, Ukraine
2013 "Old line - new line. Interaction", Detenpool Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine
2012 "Taboo", Dziga Gallery, Lviv / Lenin Gallery, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine
2012 "Aesthetics. Pidspodne", Green sofa gallery, Lviv, Ukraine

Group Exhibitions:

2022 Culture week, Tbilisi, Georgia
2022 "Fire & Hope", NTK Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
2022 "BIRUCHIY – TRANSCARPATHIA 022. ART WAR"
2022 "Konwersacje" – Wielka podrozh przez wiele granic, języków i kultur", Stara Browar, Poznań, Poland
2021 "Disappearance/Appearance", Savchenko Gallery, Gdansk, Poland
2020 "Palimpsest", Suleyman Seba 39, Istanbul. Turkey
2019 "On the front line. Ukrainian art, 2013-2019." , Museum of Memory and Tolerance, Mexico City, Mexico
2019 Biruchiy Art Contemporary, "Exodus", Kyiv History Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine
2019 "Intro", Ilko gallery, Uzhhorod, Ukraine
2018 Biruchiy Art Contemporary, "Neoshamanism. The Power of Ritual", Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine
2018 "Ukrainian still life", Institute of Contemporary Art Problems, Kyiv, Ukraine
2018 "Life, love, fear, spirituality, death, resurrection", Korydor gallery, Uzhhorod, Ukraine
2018 "Synii", Uzhhorod, Ukraine
2017 Biruchiy Art Contemporary, "Birth of tragedy from the spirit of music", Kyiv Art Week, Kyiv, Ukraine
2016 "Book", Corridor Gallery, Uzhhorod, Ukraine
2015 "Greenlife", Institute of Problems of Contemporary Art, Kyiv, Ukraine
2015 "Rezydencia", Mona gallery, Poznań, Poland
2014 "Under the blue sky", "Art Kyiv Contemporary IX", Art Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine
2013 "Slice of contextual presence", Dziga gallery, Lviv, Ukraine
2013 "One of N", Detenpool Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine
2012 "Week of Current Art", "Quattor Elementa" project, Museum of Ideas, Lviv, Ukraine
2011 "Fine Art Ukraine", Art Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine
2010 "Ukrainian Cut", Lublin, Poland
2009 "Bezobraz", Zelena Kanapa Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine
2006 "The World of Enamel", Lviv National Museum, Lviv, Ukraine
scholarships and residencies:
2019, 2020 Istambul Art Residence, Istanbul, Turkey
2021, 2019, 2018, 2016, 2013 Biruchiy Art Contemporary, Biruchiy Peninsula, Ukraine
2015 scholarship of the Minister of Culture of Poland "Gaude Polonia"