Vladyslav Riaboshtan
Vladyslav Riaboshtan (born 1996 in Dnipro, Ukraine) lives in Kyiv and works in oil, acrylic, enamel, silkscreen printing, aerosol, mixed media, paper, graphite, and photography. As a child, he was surrounded by factories, railways, unfinished subways, and many other industrial objects. Having grown up and moved to a different city, he sought out locations with this familiar atmosphere. Before the war started, he was working on a large series of Kyiv subways, which has now been transformed into the theme of a subway as a shelter, a safe zone from rockets and explosions.
War Views
2022–2023,
paper, graphite
When your familiar way of life is disrupted, the next hour is what the word “future” now contains, and you don’t know where you will be tomorrow, a small sheet of paper and graphite become the technique that can convey the moment. Instead of a canvas, one sheet captures a moment and becomes an act of survival. The darkness of the graphite corresponds to the narrative of this diary – it is the dust of the roads, black smoke over the houses against the background of a cloudy white sky, the dirt of early spring, the earth with craters from shells. Black-and-white thinking seizes the sovereignty of the mind, and this new matching medium helps you to keep and carry the diary. The series consists mainly of views of the earth taken from the sky above the enemy, and the target in the middle becomes the main axis. Air raid sirens and danger do not stop the process and it continues underground, just like this series. The journey from light to dark and from black to white continues as long as the war goes on.
neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf, Between Bridges, Prater Galerie
February 23–June 9