The beginning of Yuriy Solomko’s artistic career dates back to the late 1980s. From 1986 to 1992, he studied at the Kyiv State Art Institute in the monumental painting workshop of Mykola Storozhenko. He began his exhibition activity in 1988. In 1990, Solomko, then still a student, became a member of the squat on Paris Commune Street, whose creative atmosphere largely defined his path. His early work, like that of most Parkomuna artists, is characterized by the search for a new visual language. Remaining faithful to painting, the artist created large-format works in which characteristic features of postmodernism (quotation and ironic reinterpretation of the past) are combined with the typical baroque style of Ukrainian art, expressed in dynamic visual language, metaphorical imagery, and frequent use of the shell as a symbol of sensuality and vitality.
In the early 1990s, Solomko found his original visual language related to geographical maps, which he has been developing and transforming throughout his life. The first work was created by the artist a few months before the collapse of the USSR, when the air was filled with a sense of freedom and radical irreversible changes, when the geographical map underwent huge changes, and along with it, self-awareness and awareness of the surrounding reality were transformed.
For Solomko, “the map is one of the strongest symbols created by civilization. It combines so much that when working with one of the layers, something new inevitably appears beneath it. The only thing missing from the map is immaterial, non-visual concepts. For example, the concept of time. There is no map of emotions or experiences. But for this, there is a painting. I tend to think that any painting is a map of feelings”[1].
The first work created based on maps is “Morning Toilet.” The idea was born accidentally. Traveling through Crimea, the artist wanted to buy a local map, but on the bookstore shelves, as was usual in the early 1990s, there were only school political maps of the world. The author took these as a basis. At the same time, bookstores began to stock “Justine” by Marquis de Sade (erotic literature of this kind was banned during Soviet times) with reproductions of 18th-century engravings, which the artist also borrowed for his compositions. He himself calls this group of works “Projections” because technically, to create the image on the map, he used an epidiascope.
Later, Yuriy Solomko transformed the creative method he invented of painting projections on maps into the field of media art and began experimenting with photography. His fascination with photography is connected with a scholarship stay in Cleveland (USA). He created works by overlaying two shots: the human body and a geographical map. Remaining devoted to the symbols and signs of geographical maps and images from art history, the artist created new series of photographs where heroes from art history fit well into the surface of continents, whose images repeat the outlines of land and oceans.
A powerful series by Solomko, “Planet of People,” combines the symbolism of the map with the human body as an embodiment of the Earth’s body. For the project, the artist invited people with disabilities and other physical defects resulting from accidents or natural disasters. Through their mutilated bodies, the artist showed the Earth’s body suffering from ecological catastrophes and wars. The transformed bodies are placed on maps of the planet’s hot spots and visualize the processes occurring in specific regions, while the personal tragedy of the depicted person takes on a planetary scale. For example, in the work “Aral Sea,” the naked body of a woman with a removed breast symbolizes the tragedy of the Aral Sea, which has almost disappeared — turned into a desert due to an ecological disaster.
Continuing to work with the human body, Yuriy Solomko created a series of staged studio photographs in 2003. In his project “Regeneration,” the model was a girl with physical disabilities, whom the artist involves in a masquerade game and dressing up. Unlike the “Planet of People” project, which focused on physical losses and suffering on a global scale, the “Regeneration” project showed the beauty of the human body, but through the beauty of the tragic, which is usually hidden in a society intolerant of difference.
In the projects “Natural Product” (2007) and “GMO-Free” (2010–2014), Yuriy Solomko returns to traditional painting. By meticulously depicting green vegetables, fruits, and numerous jars of preserves, the artist gives them a bright, even “glossy” sound and thus raises the question of whether anything “natural” or “organic” exists today.
If Yuriy Solomko’s first maps were rather formal searches, experiments with new material, the latest ones openly appeal to the geopolitical context and raise complex contemporary issues. The artist increasingly turns to the theme of Ukraine, analyzing geopolitical and local contexts, and ironically commenting on myths and legends deeply rooted in Ukrainian history. One can recall his work “The Last Barricade,” created in 2008 together with Crimean Tatar artist Ismet Sheykh-Zade. Against the backdrop of the map of Ukraine are portraits of the artists themselves, holding long spears that cross the map’s space and intersect on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula. This work, prophetic in many ways, appeals to the complex history of Crimea, where the political interests of several states intersect.
[1] Desiateryk, Dmytro. Cartography of feelings: interview with Yuriy Solomko // Den. — 2000. — October 19 (No. 190): http://www.day.kiev.ua/uk/article/kultura/kartografiya-pochuttiv
