Oleksandr Zamkovskyi is a Ukrainian architect, artist, and one of the active participants in the underground processes of the Lviv art scene in the late 1980s–early 1990s. Known within the close circle of Lviv artists by the nicknames “Zamok” and “Shurik.” He participated in loud underground art actions of Soviet Lviv, including the 1987 “Invitation to Discussion” at the Museum of Photography (now the Church of St. Mary of the Snows), as well as the 1990 exhibition “Defloration” at the Lenin Museum (now the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv). In his works, the author explored the theme of corporeality, as well as simple forms and primitive symbolism, which led to the elaboration and reinterpretation of basic biological needs and their place in people’s lives.
Born in 1956 in Lviv, where he still lives and works. The artist’s circle began to form long before the start of his direct artistic practice; in childhood, the artist lived in neighboring houses with Platon Silvestrov. In 1974, Zamkovskyi entered the architectural faculty of the Lviv Polytechnic Institute [now the National University “Lviv Polytechnic”], where he studied in parallel groups with Andriy Sahaidakovskyi, Serhiy Bratkovskyi, and Mykhailo Frantsuzov. The Bureau of Aesthetics operated at the architectural faculty, where at that time young graduate postgraduates Stanislav Horskyi and Orest Makota worked. From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Oleksandr Zamkovskyi worked in the design department of the Art Combine of the Lviv Union of Artists. This allowed the artist to combine the architectural component of his activity with monumental and architectural object decoration. Thus, Zamkovskyi was able to combine a good income with artistic practice. At that time, the specialists of the art combine were renewed: along with Zamkovskyi, photographer Mykhailo Frantsuz and artist Platon Silvestrov also worked there. This began to form the artistic environment of the 1980s, consisting of the aforementioned figures, as well as creators of the young Lviv unofficial music scene, representatives of hippie culture, and the circle of artist Oleksandr Aksinin. In 1987, Zamkovskyi met artist Ihor Shuliev. Impressed by Shuliev’s painting-centered and expressive practice, Zamkovskyi counts the beginning of his own artistic practice from this moment. At the invitation of Yurii Sokolov in 1987, Oleksandr Zamkovskyi participated for the first time as an artist in the exhibition “Invitation to Discussion.” In 1990, artists of the first Lviv private gallery “∙∙∙”, organized by Heorhii Kasovan, together with Ihor Shuliev, Platon Silvestrov, and Andriy Sahaidakovskyi, held the exhibition “Defloration” in the then Lenin Museum. The exhibition caused an ambiguous reaction from the authorities and resonance among the artistic community.
Despite the fact that Zamkovskyi’s main tasks at the art combine involved working with objects and space, his artistic practice has a strictly painting direction. Having received basic artistic knowledge at the architectural faculty, Zamkovskyi began his practice with formal studies. These are painted canvases with geometrized forms tending toward modernist and avant-garde spatial searches, compositional filling of the plane, visual and decorative rhythms. Zamkovskyi thinks of his practice in cycles, each of which has a certain ideological and formal focus. A more thoughtful painting stage of the artist is the cycle that explores the theme of symbolic basic forms using the example of the simplest microorganisms – amoebas. According to the artist, art traditionally depicts iconic plots, biblical themes, while he paints the simplest forms [from a technical interview with Halyna Hleba]. Zamkovskyi’s “Amoebas” visually resemble scaled bacteria under a microscope. From painting to painting, they increase in size, number, and configurations, changing from rounded to phallic shapes. They form colonies, fill the space of the painting, and literally turn into self-sufficient complex symbolic images. The works of this cycle were presented by the author at the “Defloration” exhibition. Among the halls of the Lenin Museum, the artist chose the most difficult for exhibition [catalog of Allies, Silvestrov’s memoir]. In the context of the exhibition, Zamkovskyi’s amoebas acquired a literal phallic connotation. Among the ideological and symbolic tools that, according to the exhibition’s concept, were supposed to “deflower” the late Soviet consciousness and the space of the Lenin Museum in particular, Zamkovskyi’s works, besides the biological interpretation, also acquired an anatomical one. Among the iconic works of this cycle — is the painting “Comic ‘Defloration’,” in which the artist not only depicts simple forms but also adds a plot and narrative component. According to the painting’s title, the author in the comic genre in red tones depicts the process of anatomical defloration with stylized elements in the form of images of the penis and vagina.
From simple and phallic forms, Zamkovskyi moves on to anthropomorphic and stylized female images. An intermediate work between depicting a simple form and visualizing a symbol is a diptych, resembling a pandanus (paired portrait) with an image of a phallic amoeba on the left part of the work and a faceless female figure on the right.
The next, so-called female cycle of the author consisted of about 27 painted silkscreens. The author began experimenting with the material: painting without a stretcher on thick canvas, layering the painting, and imitating the surface of parchment. In particular, in a work that was transferred to the collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine in 2018, a similarity with the painting style of Andriy Sahaidakovskyi on old carpets is noticeable. Depicting the female body, Zamkovskyi depersonalizes it and reduces it to a symbol, which, like solar or other ancient symbolism, is the basis of human visual-imagery thinking. This semiotic sign fits into decorative friezes and ornaments that the artist composes on the canvas. Thus, the need to reduce the human figure, which in the late Soviet period is primarily associated with the canon of socialist realism, to a basic symbolic form is a process of rethinking the symbol itself, referring to its primitive original forms.
The author himself did not position or perceive himself as an artist because he believed that an artist should live by and from what he does. Zamkovskyi describes his own attraction to art as an interest in the process, in the game. According to the artist: “…the creation should not satisfy aesthetic needs; it is meant to strain thought, to carry innovation” [technical interview with Halyna Hleba]. Therefore, trust in his own experiment disappeared when dealers and potential buyers showed a desire to purchase works. Because obviously, if a sailor could understand what was an intellectual experiment, it means the artistic search led the author not there [from a technical interview with Halyna Hleba].
Oleksandr Zamkovskyi’s experimental artistic practice was limited to almost a decade of active painting and exhibition activity during 1987–1996. In the mid-1990s, Zamkovskyi left artistic practice and focused on his architectural career. Among the community of artists who graduated from the architectural faculty, he is now the only one working in the specialty. Comment type: Summary
Author: Halyna Hleba
