On June 5, the exhibition of the artist Olexander Babak opened in the Red Black Gallery in Kaniv “30 years later — the Necropolis Project”.
The exhibition presents a painting that is part of the exhibition exposition of the project “NECROPOL” (O.Babak, O.Borodai), the State Ukrainian Museum of Fine Arts, 1991. (Now the National Art Museum of Ukraine).
The project was the result of art and research work on the study of an object on the territory of Ukraine, which gradually ceases its physical existence.
The place of research of Olexander Babak and his colleagues was one of the many “dead” villages (village Leikove, Poltava region, Ukraine), which at that time had been abandoned by residents for many reasons for more than 40 years. Observing the various stages of its destruction, Alexander created several projects. At different stages, the topics of research were: old tree — project “Necropolis” in the State Museum of Ukrainian Fine Arts of the USSR (1991). Exhibition material for him were the frames of the roofs of village huts, swamps, shutters, ladles, elements of weaving machines, etc. The project “Housing — Sculpture, Sculpture — Housing” (1997) is the creation of sandbox objects based on the example of the construction of a rural cottage mazanka. Local residents were involved in the work on this project, who according to the drawings of O. Groundhog made frames for them, collected tolok for making saman. Project “Carpet — Self-Portrait” (1998). Consists of two cartons for the carpet “Self-portrait with Tamara” (150 x 600 cm and 250 x 150 cm).
The project recreated the ornamental content of the embroideries of this region and involved the execution in the material on these cartons by local craftsmen. Project “Parsun” (1999). It was based on photos of former residents found in the same “dead” village. These are ten reconstructions of figures, more than two meters high each, printed on transparent films.
In total, Alexander created more than ten projects on the territory of this facility. Observing the gradual disappearance of this village, the works reproduced it in another dimension — in the plane of artistic reconstructions.
