IT IS NOT THE DOCUMENTATION OF A DREAM PICTURE, BUT RATHER THE FILLING-OUT OF TIME WITH SMALL COLLAGIC IDEAS / Sergei Sviatchenko
SVIATCHENKO (b. 1952) is one of todays most influential collage artists. His oeuvre cuts through the boundaries of traditional and contemporary visuals, merging pop culture with politics, history, science and architecture.
Growing up in the Ukraine in 1960s, SVIATCHENKO witnessed first-hand the revolutionary shifts in global society and contemporary culture. From Khrushchev’s tomb to Gorbachev’s new openness and the fall of the Wall, and the revolutionary extension of the West, bringing with it a new flourish of pop culture and artistic expression. In SVIATCHENKO’s work we see the reflections of decades of artistic exploration. From the World War I, Dadaism, Surrealism, Soviet Avant-Garde, Constructivism and the 1960s American Expressionists and Pop music, and the films of director Andrei Tarkovsky.
A provocateur in the world of contemporary art, SVIATCHENKO’s collages and paintings have been exhibited in Denmark, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, France, England, Canada, and the USA and featured in celebrated magazines such as Dazed & Confused, AnOther, Kilimanjaro, Varoom, Elephant, This is a magazine, Rojo, Viewpoint and Blueprint.
He is also the founder and editor of online photography project “Close Up and Private”, which looks to capture the discourse between clothing, fashion and image. SVIATCHENKO has completed major commissions for companies in Denmark such as Jyske Bank, Silkeborg, Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Poul Due Jensen Academy, Grundfos, and Magasin du Nord, Copenhagen.
His work has been published in monographs including Sergei Sviatchenko: Collages by Rick Poynor (Schlebrügge, Vienna, 2014), Everything Goes Right and Left if You Want it. Art by Sergei Sviatchenko (Gestalten, Berlin, 2012), and Sergei Sviatchenko: I AM COLLAGE, (Lindhardt & Ringhof, Denmark 2018).
Faye Dowling
Curator and Editor, London
Aesthetic Surprises
Since 1990 Sergei Sviatchenko has lived and worked in Viborg, Denmark, where he raised a family of three. Sviatchenko has a PhD from the Kiev School of Architecture and is a Modernist inside and out.
With one foot in his mother country Ukraine and the other in the Denmark, Sviatchenko combines the Eastern Constructivism and photomontage traditions with Bauhaus aesthetics as well as Western Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism and rock music.
Sviatchenko’s oeuvre spans the known and the unimaginable. It cuts through the boundaries of traditional and contemporary visuals to merge pop culture with politics, personal memory with collective histories, and architecture and science with dreams and visions.
Sviatchenko challenges the limits of visual representation by constantly seeking the ideal balance of deconstruction without loss of meaning. He works with space, shape and the disruption of both elements. He refers to the practice of disruption as ‘aesthetic surprises’, where elements from different contexts collide and merge. Important details are being cut out, and through the remaining fragments we are invited to shape our own images from what remains an ambiguous semifigurative abstraction.
In our world of visual overload, Sviatchenko stands out as an artist, who reduces instead of adds. In 2004 Sviatchenko introduced the artistic strategy of deconstruction called ‘Less’, where he by adding a maximum of three elements, would change the reading of a given image. Sviatchenko’s ‘Less’ strategy is one his most original contributions to international collage art.
Christian Kortegaard Madsen
Curator and Museum Director, Denmark
CV
Sergei Sviatchenko
Born 1952, Kharkov, Ukraine, USSR.
Since 1990 lives and works in Viborg, Denmark
Education
Graduated from Kharkiv National University of Construction and Architecture, 1969 -1975
PhD in Architecture, Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, 1983-86
Honorary Member and Professor of the Ukrainian Academy of Architecture, 2022
Selected solo exhibition from the past 15 years
2022
Revisited, Edition Eikon, Vienna Contemporary, Vienna, Austria
Emotional Rescue, cut out installation, Art center Silkeborg Bad, Silkeborg, Denmark
2021
Better than the Moon, Fredericia Art Association, Fredericia, Denmark
2019
Dream Machine, Homage to Interbau 57, Hansa center and the Danish Embassy, Berlin
WE, collage, photography, paintings, Galerie Didier Devillez, Stephan Marquardt & Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
2018
Nature Matter, curated by Fay Dawling, Silkeborg Art Centre, Denmark
End of Spring, Kiev Art Week, Ukraine
Artist Take by Sergei Sviatchenko for Magasin du Nord, Copenhagen
2017
You, Retrospective, curated by Helene Bay Nyborg, Kunsthal Viborg, Denmark
2016
Secretly, Collage and paintings, curated Elisabeth Hajek and Manfred, Maenling, Vienna
Secretly, Wall installation at the MQ Fore Court, Vienna
2013
For Light and Memory, Gestalten Space, Berlin
2012
Mirror by Mirror, Homage to Andrei Tarkovsky, photocollage, installation, Ivanovo Art Museum, Ivanovo, Russia
Mirror by Mirror, Homage to Andrei Tarkovsky, photocollage, installation, Riga Film Museum, Riga, Latvia
2011
Sergey Nielsen paintings for Close Up And Private, Kaufmannshaus, Hamburg, Germany
Mirror by Mirror, West Cork Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland
2009
The Shape of White, Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester NY, USA
Mirror by Mirror, Homage to Andrei Tarkovsky, photocollage, installation, Gallery Photo Edition Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Broken Images, Liaison Controverse, Dusseldorf, Germany
2008
The Trip, Homage to the Psychedelic era, collage installation, ROJO artspace, Barcelona, Spain
Architectural Landscape, Galerie Gardy Wiechern, paintings, Hamburg, Germany
Territory of Water, Art space Spanien 19 c, video installation, Aarhus, Denmark
2007
Prints Tokyo, International Print Exhibition, Sakima Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan
Outsideinside, Drake Hotel public spaces, Toronto, Canada
2007
Rather Gentle Stereotype, Spark, Copenhagen, Denmark
2006
Galerie Gardy Wiechern, paintings, Hamburg, Germany
2005
Darwin My Friend, collage, installation, Galleria Arturarte, Rome, Italy
2004
Twins, installation, Stockholm Art Fair, Galerie Wolfsen, Stockholm, Sweden
Less, collages, Iride Associazione, Perugia, Italia
2003
Express, installation, photography, Galleri Ægidius, Randers, Denmark
Galerie Gardy Wiechern, paintings, Hamburg, Germany
2000
Katarsis, installation, video, photography, Aarhus School of Architecture, Aarhus, Denmark
New Works, Galerie Gardy Wiechern, paintings, Hamburg, Germany
1994
FIAC (International Art Fair), Gallery Nord, Paris, France
1991
Gallery Thea Fisher-Reinhardt, West Berlin, Germany
1990
Gallery at the magazine Decorative Art of USSR, Moscow, USSR
1986
Institute of Design, Kiev, Ukraine, USSR
Selected group exhibitions from the past 15 years
2022
Unfolding Landscapes: Landscape and poetics in contemporary Ukranian art, 2022 Silkeborg (Denmark) Brussels (Belgium), Kunst (Zeng) Hans, Rapperswil-Jona (Switzerland)
2021
Less Festival of Contemporary Collage – Less Education, Viborg, Denmark
2020
Less Festival of Contemporary Collage, Viborg, Denmark
2019
You Know My Name, Photo Kyiv Fair, Kyiv, Ukraine
Art Week, Kyiv, Ukraine
2018
International Weird Collage Show, Jealous Gallery, London
Meta-Matter, curated by Faye Dawling, Karst, Plymouth, UK
2016
Detached, Now and tomorrow, EIKON gallery at MQ, Vienna
2014
L'Extime, Galerie Seine 51, Paris
2013
Less, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia
Faceless, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, Austria
2011
For Love Not Money, The 15th Tallinn Print Triennial, Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia
Contemporary Collage, West Cork Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland
Contemporary Collage, Gestalten Space, Berlin, Germany
2010
21st International Poster and Graphic Design Festival, Chaumont, France
Capture the Fade, The Paper Mill Gallery, Sydney;
2009
Cut, Platform Gallery, Seattle, Washington
Appetite for Construction, curated by Mia Nielsen, Drake Hotel public spaces, Toronto
2008
It’s Nice That/Original Format, The Viewpoint Gallery, Plymouth, England
Ink 01, International Illustration Rally, Fundación Bilbao Arte Fundazioa, Bilbao, Spain
Rojo Out, Reina Sofia Contemporary Art Museum, Madrid, Spain
The Visual Way of Life, Optica, International festival for video art, FNAC Callao, Madrid, Spain
Cosmological Embeddedness or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Gallery Higher Pictures, New York, USA
2007
Smart For Two, Rojo, Venice, California, USA
Selected awards in the past 15 years
2013
Film Mirror by Mirror. Homage to Andrei Tarkovsky. With Noriko Okaku (JP/UK) - 1st prize at the International competition of experimental short films at The Lucca International Film Festival, Toscana, Italy
2nd place in Fine Art: Collage category, International Photography Awards, Los Angeles, USA
2012
Honorable Mention in Fine Art: Collage category for the winning entry “Lineless”, International Photography Awards, Los Angeles, USA
2010
Capture the Fade, Overall winner, Ampersand Magazine Photography Award, Sydney, Australia
2009
Honorable Mention in Fine Art: Collage category for the winning entry “Less”, International Photography Awards, Los Angeles, USA
2007
D&AD Yellow Pencil, London, England
Selected books and catalogues in the past 10 years
2022
Sergei Sviatchenko, Close Up And Private. Modern Classicist. Verlag For Moderne Kunst, Vienna, Austria
2021
Christian Kortegaard Madsen, Min ven Sergei Sviatchenko, Fredericia Kunstforening
2018
Jørn Jacobsen, Sergei Sviatchenko: I am collage, Lindhardt & Ringhof, Copenhagen
2014
Rick Poynor, Sergei Sviatchenko: Collages, Schlebrueger.editor, Vienna
2012
Silke Krohn (ed.), Everything Goes Right & Left if You Want It: The Art of Sergei Sviatchenko, Gestalten, Berlin
Selected articles in the past 15 years
2022
Magrit Mossmer, Sergei Sviatchenko. Constraction -Deconstraction – Reconstraction
Rick Poynor Collage Now, Part 1: Sergei Sviatchenko, 2013, Designobserver
Rick Poynor A cut above inside the spirited collage worlds of Sergei Sviatchenko.The Calvet Jurnal, 2016
2016
Rick Poynor, A cut above inside the spirited collage worlds of Sergei Sviatchenko.The Calvet Jurnal.
2015
Thomas Edlinger, “Less plus less”, Eikon no.89, Austria
2014
Eunyoung Park, “Graphic Design to overpower the Space”, Design, no.430, April, South Korea
Antony Hudek, “Collaborations. Sergei Sviatchenko”, CCC Newspaper nr.1, Austria
2013
Ayako Ueda, “Visual Language of Style. Sergei Sviatchenko”, Free&Easy, no.174, April, Japan
Peppe Orru, “A modern-day renaissance man: the multi-faceted work of Sergei Sviatchenko”, Collezioni Uomo, nr.83, Italy
P.J. Smith, “Sergei Sviatchenko” Acclaim, no. 29, Australia
Rick Poynor, Collage Now, Part 1: Sergei Sviatchenko, 2013, Designobserver.
2011
Francis Cazal, “De l’art et du style”, Clark, no.50, September/October, Paris, France
Paul Burgess, “The Future is Junk”, Varoom no. 12, spring, UK
2009
Richard Brereton, “Sticks in the Mind”, Elephant, no.1, winter 2009-10, UK
Xi Sheng, ”Sergei Sviatchenko” 100%O2, no.001, China
2008
Peter Kelly, “Paper City: Sergei Sviatchenko”, Blueprint no. 272, November, London UK
2007
Anna Follo and Nello Russo, “Sergei Sviatchenko”, Playzebra, no.05, Italy
“Who I Think I Am”, thisisamagazine 5th compendium, Italy
Walter Bettens, “Art for Art’s Sake”, DAMn no. 12, July/August, Belgium
Anna Lengle, “Meeting Sviatchenko”, LE, no.235, August, Russia
“Nami”, Rojo, Spain; “Fortwo”, Rojo, special edition, Spain
2006
Adrian Shaughnessy, “Mapping the Terrain”, interview with Sviatchenko, Varoom no. 1, UK
Sergei Sviatchenko, “When I was Seventeen…” Kilimanjaro, no.6, UK
© Sergei Sviatchenko, 2022
© Sergei Sviatchenko, 2022