Stanislav Volyazlovsky is a contemporary Ukrainian artist, born and living in Kherson, now known not only in his homeland but also abroad. What are the “ingredients” of his creativity? Our correspondent visited the master’s “art kitchen.”
Today, Stanislav Volyazlovsky’s works can be seen not only in the most famous Ukrainian contemporary art galleries but also in various foreign art centers and many exhibitions. And how did the so-called “creative path” of the founder of the “chanson-art” direction begin?
– You can start with the fact that the “creative path” has always been an integral part of my life path. I think both can be considered quite peculiar. In childhood, I attended the Kherson children’s art school, which I dropped out of when plaster nose drawings from life began. Then there were courses for artist-designers, where there were also plaster nose drawings from life, and one of the girls attending those courses, like me, drew them for me. She drew them from memory at my home, placing a sheet of paper on my back while I was resting. For example, back in the early nineties, after studying for a year at SPTU-4 in Kherson in the ceramic artists’ courses, I started working there as a production training master. At the same time, I had no pedagogical education and still don’t. Moreover, I didn’t even finish the ninth grade of school, only received a certificate. But I “served time” in the dormitory for a whole four and a half years. Later, I worked about the same amount of time at the Center for Children’s and Youth Creativity of the Komsomolsky district, where they recorded 9 years of teaching experience in my work book. Apparently, according to the number of completed classes of my “education.” There, besides regular children, I had a group of students from a special needs school. Usually, these were normal children, although most came from disadvantaged families. In this center, my position was the head of the ceramics club. I didn’t strictly follow the curriculum, trying to give freedom of imagination to my wards. That is, the classic “pitchers,” plates, vases were not essential. Many of their works were very talented and inspired even me. For example, what can you say about a hare with five legs? Or a bas-relief portrait of an alcoholic father with a bottle on the same pitcher. Such samples always amused me.
I understand that your personal creativity was developing simultaneously?
– I always wanted to be in my creativity not just on the edge of the norm but beyond that edge. Moreover, this was not banal provocation; it was an inner urge, a personal desire to do exactly that. Thus, “penis-art” arose – a genre at the intersection of painting and text, in which each work had to necessarily include the well-known male organ. Now I perceive that period as a kind of childishness, mockery, similar to the works of Soviet schoolchildren, in which under any circumstances there had to be a cheerful sun. I remember it was called “In every drawing – the sun.” Nevertheless, these experiments attracted the attention of a certain part of the Kherson “bohemia,” and thanks to the director of the Youth Initiatives Center “Totem,” Lena Afanasieva, and member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine Vyacheslav Mashnitsky, they somehow began to appear in public. There were exhibitions at the Illusion cinema distribution, at Mashnitsky’s Contemporary Art Gallery, which later became the first Museum of Contemporary Art of Ukraine. At the Kherson Art Museum named after Shovkunenko. The public’s perception was ambiguous but generally positive. At the same time, other, more “decent,” so to speak, works appeared. They were so decent that at some point they suddenly wanted to accept me into the Kherson Regional Organization of the Union of Artists. However, my entire creative essence desperately resisted this. Sometimes it led to very funny situations. In the exhibition hall of the Union of Artists of Ukraine on Freedom Square, among other “academic” paintings, my clearly hooligan works were seriously exhibited. For example, in one of them, depicting a plate, I wove into the intricate ornament of the vessel’s decoration a scene of two gay men copulating. This could only be seen with great concentration. There was also a still life exhibited there, made with the same aforementioned organ. It was displayed at a vernissage prepared by the Union of Artists especially for March 8. Later, I plunged into even more explicit hooliganism – just so as not to become a member of the Union of Artists. And finally, they somehow forgot about me there.
What is wrong with the Union of Artists?
– It’s not that there’s something wrong… There are many wonderful artists there. I warmly remember the Kherson artist Felix Kider, with whom I was very close friends. Thanks to him, I participated in international exhibitions of ex-libris and small graphics. He taught me the etching technique and generally advised me a lot about art, which was very useful to me. Artist Vladimir Goncharenko was the first to suggest I exhibit my ceramics in the Kherson exhibition hall. There were just moments that… well, were not for me. For example: at some Kyiv exhibition, they once selected immediately about eight or even ten portraits of Taras Shevchenko created by different authors. Moreover, they accepted an eleventh portrait into this “collection” beyond the limit, painted by the most famous Kherson master, an elder of the local painting guild. Really: what’s the point of offending a master? Such an openly blatant, “Soviet-style” approach to art always repelled me.
So how did your current fame come about?
– I have always been very loyal to criticism; it has invariably helped and helps me understand myself, where I am going, and why. Once, Ukrainian artist Yuri Solomka came to visit Vyacheslav Mashnitsky in Kherson. I showed him experiments both in the field of penis-art and in other genres. Yura noted that the author definitely has talent, but these works are too stylistically diverse, lacking a concept for all that I was doing then. He didn’t understand where I was going, what I was looking for and wanted. He also added that all this reminded him of the work of schizophrenics. After that, I realized that it was unclear to me too. A kind of “depression” period, a rethinking of everything came. But in the end, I believe that communication with Yura Solomka only benefited me. Earlier, I came across the magazine “Decorative Art,” which was dedicated to art brut and outsider art. In the drawings of the mentally ill, there was a certain freedom of thought, despite the grim fact that all were drawn in closed medical institutions. Moreover, I remembered a character from the literary works of Ilf and Petrov, who went to a psychiatric hospital because there he could freely criticize the Soviet government. In short, my drawings gained a certain freedom previously restrained by me. Even earlier, not only my “penis-art” experiments but also some texts (besides everything else, I am engaged in literary creativity) began to be published by the then leading art space magazine in Ukraine, “NASH,” based in Dnipropetrovsk. Thanks to these publications and the magazine’s art director Igor Nikolaenko, my work attracted the attention of PinchukArtCentre curator Alexander Solovyov. By that time, the well-known PinchukArtCentre had already been established in Kyiv, and I took part in its second exhibition. My works caught the attention of the famous Russian gallerist and collector Vladimir Ovcharenko, as well as some cultural institutions. Later, I had the opportunity to participate in an exhibition in Sweden, at the factory where Nobel first demonstrated the successful detonation of dynamite…
… and in 2011 you were awarded the Kazimir Malevich Prize.
– Somehow it happened that I became one of the, as of today, four Ukrainian artists who became laureates of this prize, established by the Polish government with the support of international art funds. The prize conditions include an international creative residency in Warsaw. During the residency, I managed not only to fruitfully communicate with colleagues from other countries but also to organize a performance. I lived on the territory of an old Polish castle, and since I also have Polish roots (as my name and surname indicate), I decided it would be good to “creatively” claim my rights to this castle. As it turned out later, I was not the first claimant to this living space; moreover, unlike me, the citizen claimed it legally. As part of the project, a plaque was installed, which in Polish invited all guests of my residence, before entering, to thoroughly wipe their feet on a special mat at the entrance and also to take off their shoes. At the same time, I myself was dressed in a fur hat a la “Polish szlachta,” in decorative armor of an ancient Russian warrior, Adidas underwear, and rubber slippers: a kind of “szlachta” of the new era, a descendant of Polish nobility living in Ukrainian Kherson. Many Poles approached, read, photographed. And wiped their feet on the mat.
How is your creativity developing now?
– After the aforementioned “depression” caused by artist Solomka’s criticism, a special inspiration came to me. Besides the above-mentioned creativity of the mentally ill, I paid attention to a peculiar culture that still receives little attention here: the creativity of prisoners. Thus, the series of “rags” or sheets drawn with a ballpoint pen with, as they like to say, “suspicious spots” – tea. Or rather – strong prison tea (chifir). In prison, there is a kind of folk art called “marka.” “Marka” is a small (compared to my sheets) piece of fabric or handkerchief on which a creatively skilled inmate draws some picture with a ballpoint pen, often a gift “outside” to a beloved woman or relatives. For example, a cross spider framed by his own poetic work with elements of lyricism. I have seen such handkerchiefs. This series was highly appreciated by some other artists and art lovers, and the same Vyacheslav Mashnitsky stated that it was “already something resembling the real thing.” Thus, the direction of “chanson-art” arose, in which I combined a certain free-thinking of schizophrenics mentioned above with something reminiscent of prison tattoos in graphics and texts in the spirit of urban folklore and yellow press. I adhere to this “my own thing,” called by me chanson-art, to this day.
Ordinary people have a negative opinion about prisoners, about the so-called “chanson,” and even more so about prisoners’ visual art in general. How do prison “concepts” combine with contemporary art?
– Personally, I consider chanson a fertile field for experiments in contemporary art. And in the opinions of ordinary people, I see clear snobbery. However, that’s what ordinary people are. At the same time, I am by no means a propagandist of the so-called “camp culture,” the romance of the zone, or anything like that, although I often draw to the music of, alas, the late Mikhail Krug. Just as an artist, I find certain aesthetic values and potentials in this layer of creativity that can be transformed into real contemporary art. No joke.Link
