Artist, the giver of Words
Oleksandr Dubovyk opens his exhibition and launches a new book in Kyiv’s Spiritual Treasures of Ukraine Museum on March 29, 2012
In the 1970s, the artist got vividly and seamlessly fit into the dense community of the Moscow underground and was revered not only by selected visitors of semi-legal exhibitions, but by farsighted domestic and foreign collectors, too.
Nowadays, his works are kept in museums and private collections all over the world. An intellectual and philosopher with an incredible sense of humor, Dubovyk easily mixes paints and genres, delivers brilliant lectures, and, as he described it himself, “occasionally dabbles in writing.” It should be said that he is quite successful in this last-mentioned pursuit, too.
The author-designed Words is a kind of gift that the artist made to himself as he celebrated his 80th birthday. The anniversary year was filled with exhibitions at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, in Ukrainian and West European cities, but he did not stop thinking about the book, actively supported by his like-minded wife and loyal friend Iryna. After all, there were poems and prose works, essays and short reflections on what he had seen and read, all stored in his personal archive.
All this, as well as his selected paintings, is contained in the new book that has been presented to the public. The idea of this volume, so complex in its structure and content, would have been difficult to implement without the help of its sponsors, UNIQA Insurance Company and Raiffeisen Bank Aval that willingly supported quite a few major cultural projects over years. Kyiv publishing house Sofia was another indispensable partner of the author.
To retell the content of such an unusual book is a thankless job. One would benefit more from feeling the heavy volume in one’s hand, slowly turning the pages, filling one’s mind with emotions which Dubovyk expresses in his works, and reflecting on his wordplay. He writes, for example: “Catch your thought, as a newborn thought is not yours yet, and can be caught only when enclosed by a net; when you make a deep breath, exhale the air in the form of an art work looking like some fruits brought from the overseas.”
Dubovyk has that amazing human ability to remain young and live on hope, his age notwithstanding.
