The exhibition: House faces
On Saturday, February 9, 2019, Lachenmann Art will open the solo exhibition ›House Faces‹ by Yury Kharchenko at 6 p.m. in its Konstanz gallery. The paintings oscillate between abstraction and figuration; the subject and color are charged with archaic-lyrical forces. Kharchenko's oeuvre grows out of his confrontation with his identity, his Russian-Jewish roots, his upbringing in Germany and with existentialism.
The thematic starting point for his house paintings are the twelve tribes of Israel symbolized in the twelve houses. The house is the place of origin of the family and culture, a symbol of identity and home. These houses have been transformed into sculptural and organ-like beings and crystal-shaped architectures with intense color and radiance. The window appears again and again, another archetypal form in his work. 'For me, the window has always been a symbol of longing, naivety, spirituality and also the ironization of spirituality,' explains the painter.
The painting: House Variation
The image appears to consist of different levels: the dark "frame" appears to be closer to us than the lighter area in the middle of the image, which is dominated by colorful shapes in the upper part. The edge of the image is dominated by dark colors, especially shades of green and blue. While the dark areas in the lower part are largely vertical, they converge in the upper fifth and form a point. Overall, it looks as if a dark, heavy curtain is opening or being pulled to the side to reveal the bright colors and more playful shapes behind it. An area of brown color can be seen at the bottom edge.
The background of the lighter area is mainly a light pink area, but is not uniform, but is crossed by vertical stripes as if by liquid paint. This allows different levels to be recognized in the painting process - the light background is followed by the shapes in the colors pink, red, orange and yellow and finally the shapes in green and blue. The colorful shapes evoke associations with suns, flower tendrils and snakes.
While other works in the 'House' series show people, even portraits, Yury Kharchenko refrains from using similar depictions in this work and restricts himself to the formal language alone. The surfaces and shapes are fluid, as the brush structure and strokes can be seen and there are hardly any hard edges; instead, the different colors complement each other by flowing over and into each other.
