Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1364923
2 Until recently, the culturally separate and artistically unique qualities of a territorially national art such as Ukraine's have customarily been absorbed into a single Russocentric narrative. Since the 18 th century, the pervasive influence of Imperial Russia did little to celebrate, let alone cultivate, regional artistic consciousness except perhaps in the realm of folklore. Relegating the colorful customs and costumes of Ukrainians to the category of a quaint aesthetic perpetuated the notion of a charming "petit russien" population. This denigrating moniker left little occasion for acknowledging a national school of fine art or progressive aesthetic. And yet, beginning with the great court portraitists, Anton Lysenko, Dmytro Levytsky, and Volodymyr Borovykovsky, and culminating with the unprecedented achievements of avant-gardists such as Alexandra Exter, Oleksandr Bohomazov and even Kazimir Malevich, alternative artistic trajectories rooted in the Ukrainian experience and in the land of Ukraine can be evidenced. Yet, despite the disintegration of the Russian Empire and its 20 th century foster child, the Soviet Union, these names continue to be co-opted into Russian culturally hegemonic narratives that still dominate the field. This exhibition and those sponsored by James Butterwick in the recent past seek to expose such narratives as myopic and unfulfilling. By focusing on two figures—Maria Syniakova and Borys Kosarev—one is offered a glimpse into a parallel, Ukrainian artistic environment, where a sensuous connection to the life-affirming organic properties of the verdant land, the fecundity of the chornozem (fertile soil), and the hidden carnal pleasures of rural life, induced artists to operate naturally in the realm of the abstract. In relaying these features, their art emulates centuries-old patterns of Ukrainian connectedness to the rawness and singular beauty of their homegrown environment. As modern artists, Syniakova and Kosarev commited themselves to unveiling the inherent balance of nature, conjuring up a local version of "yin and yang" attested to by visualizations that are constantly antipodal. Be it in the organization of the picture plane with side-by-side pictorializations, the use of diametric Boris Kosarev, Portrait of Velimir Khlebnikov, 1921 Private collection, Munich