Sheet – single bed. While preparing the canvas, the artist spills tea on it, photo by A. Yaremchuk
The scandalous artist Stas Volyazlovsky depicted President Viktor Yushchenko with a barrel of honey and a white wide-eyed horse.
The scandalously famous art-chanson master from Kherson, Stas Volyazlovsky, portrayed the head of state Viktor Yushchenko as the Cossack Mamay playing the bandura. The artist has already exhibited the painting on Andriyivskyy Descent in the art studio “Karas”, where everyone can view it for free.
“YULIA” WITH HOOVES. Near the president, depicted in Volyazlovsky’s signature style — on an old yellow single bed sheet (the canvases are picturesquely stained with Georgian tea and patched), lies a royal hat with a trident and a cockade with the “euro” sign, a barrel of honey, and also grazes a wide-eyed white mare with a braid-mane and a heart on a chain hanging around her neck. According to the author, she is a faithful companion who carries the Cossack on her back and shelters him from enemies; viewers joyfully exclaimed during the viewing: “Oh, that’s Yulia!”.
The composition and images of the canvas are akin to the canonical depictions of Mamay (horse, saber, spear, etc.); the only “edit” is that the shot of wine is replaced by the aforementioned barrel of honey. The drawing is made with an ordinary ballpoint pen in a style the author himself calls a hybrid of criminal tattoo, psychiatric hospital, and popular prints.
RESULTS. “I have already voted three times for ‘NU’, and just before the New Year I decided to sum up what I voted for. Here’s what came out. I had a lot of fun drawing it, although technically the work was very difficult,” Volyazlovsky told ‘Segodnya’.
The viewers also had fun examining the work. “It turned out very cute, with irony, but not malicious,” says Kyiv resident Oleksiy. And two friends, Ksenia and Olya, upon seeing the work, argued whether one could sleep on such a sheet (“imagine, every night with the president…”) and how much it costs (the author himself values it at $10,000: “So as not to be cheeky”).
Volyazlovsky buys canvases for his works in second-hand stores. “I rummage through rags and catch suspicious looks from aunties. I really want to turn to them and say: ‘I’m not a maniac, I buy for art, and in a month I’ll sell this 7-hryvnia sheet for $4,000.’ According to the artist, ‘Cossack Mamay-2008’ will soon tour galleries in Europe.
The work is complemented by inscriptions in three languages — Russian, Ukrainian, and English (using ‘грн’, ‘руб’, and ‘usd’ as locators symbolizing the language), which say: “Dear Friends! Although I PROSRAL the revolution, I have no time to be sad, I play the balalaika (in the Ukrainian version – bandura, in English – banjo), I buy antiques, and also keep bees and pray to God for all of you! Neither bullet nor saber frightens me, even a cup of poison does not affect me, because I am the heir of hetmans and the executor of holy freedom!”
President Viktor Yushchenko, depicted in Stas Volyazlovsky’s work ‘Cossack Mamay-2008’, is not the first politician to be captured by this artist’s ballpoint ‘pen’. Earlier, he portrayed Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with a patch over her left eye (a hybrid of a pirate, the Statue of Liberty, and a mermaid) and Russian Federation head Vladimir Putin (St. George the Victorious, tattooed with natural gas formulas, killing a serpent with a trident). The Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko with a samurai sword in hand and Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky (image not chosen) have yet to “lie on the sheet.”
However, Volyazlovsky himself says he does not want to become a caricaturist and does not intend to draw only top politicians.
His other subjects were chanson singer Mikhail Krug, girls without legs, sinister nurses. And the artist’s new project, which Kyiv residents will see in February, will be dedicated to the genre of wall newspapers. In the ‘Combat Sheets’ of the psychiatrist and ichthyologist, readers will read about dolphins with male legs and mystical ‘gypsy mobiles.’
