Have you ever seen a rocket? Well, Lucy's father has, according to the title of one of her works. The artist was born in Dnipro, a big industrial city in the east of Ukraine, known as an important centre of space rocket construction since the Soviet times. It is also known, if though in much narrower circles, for the specific painterly manner taught in the local art college.
The so-called Dnipro school of painting, a point of departure for many artistic careers in Ukraine, always stood out for its loose shapes, silverish colour palette and crispy brush strokes. Or maybe it is just another myth, similar to the one cherished in the country’s conservative alma maters, proclaiming painting to be “the heart and soul” of Ukrainian art forever and ever.
It is not that Lucy Ivanova’s practice ruins this myth. She rather complements it with more diverse shades. Her practice can be summed up as a long-lasting negotiation with the medium of painting. Negotiation with an open end. The exhibition attempts to overview this process, from early modest nature morte to the very recent delirious “explanations” of this world to the artist’s newborn, in a somewhat academic-like mockery manner of dense and excessive layout of “all important works”.
Kahan Art Space, Große Pfarrgasse 7, 1020 Wien, Austria
