Synergy

The idea of a joint exhibition arose after the artists met last year, when Volodymyr Beliakovych felt a creative kinship with Viacheslav Byruk: «he, like me, tries to create a special atmosphere of the canvas with colour, to encourage the viewer to think: what the hell is this, how to understand it, what is it about?

Abstraction – both expressive and geometric – is not about answers, it's about reflections.

It is an impulse, a push to think, to invent your own story.»

Volodymyr Belyakovych refers to the traditions of abstract expressionism, which sometimes tends to the aesthetics of art brut.

According to him, any of his paintings is «a story written with colours and textures, where each colour has its own meaning, becomes a kind of signal that goes to the viewer's subconscious and motivates him to feel, fantasise, and recall different moments of life.

No two people are the same, and there is no single correct perception. Everyone perceives everything through the prism of their own experience.»

Viacheslav Byruk is an advocate of the conceptual direction in the visual arts, his non-figurative works are laconic and graphic, on the borderline between painting and design.

In his creative practice, he is guided by the opinion of the American conceptual artist Dzhosef Koshut that all art (after Diushan) is conceptual in nature: the thought (conceptus) that became the impetus for creation is no less important than its embodiment.

«I present the way I see the object of contemplation. But how the viewer perceives and interprets my work is his or her full right. The work is finished – it no longer belongs to me, but to society.»

The title of the exhibition aptly defines the artists' position – the word «synergy» is of Greek origin, formed from the combination of the words «together» and «action» and is the definition of an interesting total effect: when several factors interact, their effect significantly exceeds the effect of each individual component.

Thus, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.

It is on this principle that two different worlds have been united in one exhibition –the world of logic and rational aesthetics of Viacheslav Byruk and the world of spontaneous, intuitive and subconscious art of Volodymyr Beliakovych.

And these worlds organically complement each other, enhance the sound, multiply the impression – like cold and warm colours according to the «theory of contrasting and complementary colours», like Mondrian's neoplasticism and Pollok's expressive gesture in the context of equal importance for the development and enrichment of abstract art.

«Synergy is when 1+1=3: in the process of interaction between two factors, new meanings are born.

Synergy is also when there is a painting with the meanings intended by the author, and there is a viewer who fills the painting with his or her personal meaning, experience, vision, and feelings» (Volodymyr Beliakovych).