Bohdanowicz / Ravskyi
May - October 2016
Living-Room Café, Center for Urban History
The exhibition presents works authored by Maciej Bohdanowicz from the project "Imitation of Truth. Is It?" and by Yevhen Ravskyi from the "Halywood" project combined in one collage style. The works by the artists present a bright example of creating metaphoric layers that combine several levels of events within one visual style. It makes the viewers lose orientation in a historical context. The works by Bohdanowicz/Ravskkyi not only stand for the space of an emulated authors' world but also for the place for generating new symbols and interpretations among the audience.
The birth of photography was considered a revolutionary point in recording the reality, even though the paper could only record fragments of the whole world. It allowed the mankind to better develop a visual archive and collective historical memory. Instead, it was already in the 19 century that photographers started using elements of visual manipulation.
"I corrected conventional landscapes a bit, with the help of grotesque images at the intersection of daydreaming, fantasies and modern imagery. Traditional collage tools could be replaced here by some technologies but the spirit remains the same," a photo artist Maciej Bohdanowicz comments on his project "Imitation of Truth. Is It?"
At the same time, the "Halywood" project by Yevhen Ravskyi also uses collage to "complement the reality." The play on words with a popular and well-recognizable name Hollywood that has already become a symbol, to signify the country of cinema, or the country of dreams, when combined with the Latin Haly (short for Halychyna), shows the capacity of Halychyna and Lviv. First meeting with the "Halywood" project by Yevhen Ravskyi was in 2008 under the Week of Actual Art. Today, his works have acquired a new context.
Maciej Bohdanowicz
is a doctor of Fine Arts, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. Presently, he works there under the supervision of prof. Andrzej Michalik in the drawing workshop at the faculty of Visual Arts. He works with digital images and photography. His main interests include the issues of truth in the picture, trustworthiness and search for new methods to manipulate the content of the image. The series of his works usually takes its origin from his reflections on modern functions and opportunities that photography offers, as well as manipulating pictures.
Yevhen Ravskyi
graduated from a Taras Shevchenko Republican Art School. He is well-known in artistic community of Lviv and Ukraine. The works by the author are stored in Lviv Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Fine Arts and in private collections of Ukraine, the USA, Norway, Germany, Poland, Estonia, and the Netherlands. He is author of the projects The Louvre with Volodymyr Kostyrko (2013), Genius loci – The Genius of the Place (2012), and triennial exhibitions of modern Ukrainian art Ukrainian Cross Section. The Estuary (2013), New Old Masters (2011).
Credits
Cover Image by Matsei Bohdanovich
Gallery Image by Matsei Bohdanovich, Yevhen Ravskyi, Andrii Bondarenko
