Taras Polataiko cited as "one of 10 artists to watch worldwide"

by Oksana Zakydalsky

TORONTO - What does one do after having been named one of the "10 artists to watch worldwide" by the prestigious ARTnews (January 1995)? Do things that are worthwhile to watch!

Taras Polataiko continues to draw attention: "a new star of the Canadian art world" (Western Record, February, 1996), "one of the most carefully scrutinized artists in Canada" (Border Crossings, 1996), as an artist who is "sharply tuned into current art trends, he works intuitively and intentionally beyond them" (World Art, No.12). These are only a few quotes that describe this artist.

A review of his show at the Caelum gallery in New York (ARTnews, April 1997) called his works "vigorously up to date." Temporarily living in Toronto, Mr. Polataiko's latest work "Mole: Installation" was shown at the Art Gallery of North York, Toronto, from May 1 to June 30.

Taras Polataiko lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where he arrived from Ukraine in 1991. It was a time when Ukrainians were celebrating the centenary of their settlement in Canada; Ramon Hnatyshyn, son of Ukrainian immigrants, was ensconsed in Ottawa as governor general and the country was awash in commemorative euphoria. A statue of the governor general was erected in Saskatoon in September, 1992, commissioned by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Mr. Polataiko, then a student of fine arts at the University of Saskatchewan, painted himself bronze and, facing Mr. Hnatyshyn, mounted his own pedestal on which he wrote: "Dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Ukrainian settlement in honor of those Ukrainians who never became governor general." It was October and Mr. Polataiko stood motionless for an hour on seven separate occasions in the uncomfortable cold. His art action, called "Artist as a Politician - in the Shadow of the Monument," stirred fierce controversy. He was accused of mocking Ukrainians who came to settle in Canada; a city councillor called the action "offensive to the community and disrespectful of the things for which this country stands."

There were also supporters of Mr. Polataiko's action who covered his pedestal with cards and information on other immigrants who did not become governor general. And it got him noticed by ARTnews. Mr. Polataiko claims that political notoriety was not his aim at the time. "It got politicized more than I wished, for it was aesthetic, the aesthetics of dealing with an image in a public space, an image in a public space loaded with historical meanings. I was curious to see what would happen if I produced a mirror image," he said.

Born on September 28, 1966, in Chernivtsi, the son of a sculptor, Mr. Polataiko was part of the art world from childhood. He dropped out of every school he attended: he didn't complete a school for gifted children because he did not like a teacher, he attended the Kosiv College of Art for only two years (1981-1983) and then, at age 17, went to Moscow to the Stroganov Institute of Fine and Industrial Arts (1983-1989), which he also did not finish. In 1991 he came to Saskatoon on a personal invitation. At the University of Saskatchewan he was offered studio space and a scholarship for the master of fine arts program, a certificate that he actually completed in 1993.

Saskatoon - a provincial prairie city of about 200,000 inhabitants was, after post-perestroika Moscow, a big change for Mr. Polataiko. Socialist Realism, with its references to a completely foreign Soviet context, seemed exotic in the North American. His first show in Canada, called "YOU," was a series of self-portrait paintings in high contrasts of light and shadows and some of the works incorporated Soviet-type propaganda art elements. The works were completed in 1992-1994 and one work of this series was acquired by Microsoft's president, Bill Gates.

In his series "Glare" (Rosemont Art Gallery, Regina, 1994), Mr. Polataiko examined "how various media overlap and cross over into one another's field of meaning" (Border Crossings, 1996). He photographed a number of black and white reproductions from a book of paintings by Kazimir Malevich (it is interesting that in all the reviews and catalogue texts of this series, Kyiv-born Malevich, who had hitherto always been called a Russian avant-garde artist, is now referred to as Mr. Polataiko's countryman), and then painted the paintings, incorporating the glare of the camera flash, the bends in the book page, even the surface on which the photographed book sat.

In the article "Malevich's Ghost" (World Art, No. 12), Mr. Polataiko claimed, "The Glare paintings were difficult to do. I had to show the illusion of the flat surface of the page. Each of the paintings takes place in the lightning time-span of a blink of an eye. Malevich wanted to move toward a space of emptiness, a world that is invisible to common sight. The glare is like that - an additional element. It is like a ghost emanating from Malevich's pictorial arrangements. A glare is so present that we condition ourselves not to see it. We see through it." Mr. Polataiko scaled his paintings to the dimensions of the original Malevich canvases. A painting was photographed and reproduced, the photograph was replicted and painted - all creating a disorienting effect.

Although supposedly eschewing the political, Mr. Polataiko's next project again made use of political symbolism. He visited the 30-kilometer closed zone around the Chornobyl plant, spending several days there absorbing radioactivity. Then, over a period of 15 months, he had five liters of his blood extracted. The blood was stored frozen in the artist's refrigerator and became part of his next project, the installation "Cradle" (The Mendel Gallery, Saskatoon, January/February, 1996).

A cast iron bathtub, plated with a shimmering nickel coating, was completely covered and sealed off near its rim by a plate of nickel. The tub was suspended about six inches above the floor by four anchor chains. Ceiling lights reflected off the tub's surface. In the center of the tub's nickel plate lid, a small hinged cap covered a hole. One could peer inside the dark tub by lifting the cap. The contents of the tub - the five litres of the artist's irradiated blood mixed with anti-coagulants.

Also part of the installation were six oval paintings constructed of drywall and covered by wallpaper patterned with small colored squares. Each painting was hung in a highly polished stainless steel frame. Mr. Polataiko had punched each of the wallpapered paintings with his fist making a hole in the drywall. The hole was patched up and carefully painted over in trompe l'oeil fashion until the restoration was barely discernible. It was only from a certain angle that one could see that each work had been punctured and then patched up.

According to the "Cradle" exhibit catalogue, "Nothing appears to be happening across these surface of the wallpaper but the appearance and disappearance of the patch, depending on where you stand and where the light is hitting, reveals a process of something being there and not being there at the same instant. The theatrical setting operates on both an ideological and an aesthetic level. It implies violent action yet is cool and remote."

Mr. Polataiko was asked whether it was necessary that he make himself susceptible to radiation in order to do the piece. Could not he have just created a metaphor for contaminated blood? "That was exactly something I was trying to avoid. Then it would be like a smart work. I don't think this is smart work; this is visceral work. The process is probably the most important thing about this work" said Mr. Polataiko (Border Crossings, 1996).

It is the viewer's choice whether or not to look in the tub and see the blood. "When the viewer sees the blood, it's more powerful than just imagining it was there or having it hermetically sealed inside the tub. Why didn't I use animal blood? It's important that the blood is from me. If you don't do that, you might as well use acrylic paint. It had to be mine, not for the viewer, just for me. It is a private meditative piece that puts me through an important process. At the same time I don't think it's personal, I think it's impersonal," he continued (Border Crossings, 1996). It is a deliberately understated installation; the blood was not splashed over the walls nor spilled over the floor, but placed inside the tub-out of sight, but not out of mind.

I look over the numerous articles and reviews of Mr. Polataiko in front of me. Reviewers and journalists never seem to run out of things to say about his works. There is agreement on some points: that Mr. Polataiko's work asks questions; that it acknowledges the presence of the artist and viewer and that he loves turning his work back onto the viewer who is often passive before a work of art. The concepts that interest the artist are not desiccated intellectual constructs, but notions which can be shared by the viewer and that Mr. Polataiko uses to involve the viewer: illusion, deception, trompe l'oeil, blind spots, mirrors, contamination, dislocation, distortion, erasure. Yet they probably don't have the same meaning for the viewer and for the artist because Mr. Polataiko's concerns are primarily formal; his art is about art and it is to art that he relates the above notions.

Prepared to be an active viewer, I went to the opening of Mr. Polataiko's Toronto exhibit "Mole: Installation." I find the thorough formality of the installation opaque and impervious. Large photographic blow-ups of holes in the wall around the Reichstag in Berlin, bullet holes made during the war - by Germans? By Soviets? Does it matter? The photographs are turned upside down so that the hole and its tunnel form become a protuberance. A mole? In the middle of the gallery floor, there is a mound of earth, watched over by a security guard. Out of the mound of earth, a mole (in this case stuffed, but even when alive - blind) is looking at us looking at the moles on the wall. I remember one of the articles referring the artist's "deviant sense of humor" and leave it at that.

Mr. Polataiko currently has a basement studio in the west end of Toronto, among body shop garages. Under his loft bed the nickel plated bathtub with its five litres of blood is stored. Large "Glare" canvases line the walls. The artist is engaging, friendly and generous in providing information. A whip hangs in the studio. I learn that it is to be part of his next project.

Unlike the Hnatyshyn statue, where the artist took on a Ukrainian icon, his next project involves commemorating a native of Lviv about whom the city fathers are ambivalent. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was an Austrian writer, born in Lviv in 1836 where he spent the first 16 years of his life. Some of his writings are set in Galicia and he taught briefly at Lviv University. His works are said to be of little literary value, but his preoccupation with sexual perversions was immortalized in the term masochism. The house in Lviv where he was born has no plaque to commemorate him. The Soviets considered him too deviant to celebrate as a cultural figure.

Mr. Polataiko's Masoch project will take two forms: photographs of the whip in mid air with the camera catching the whip just before it touches the skin, a moment that is too fast for the human eye. A nickel plated whip will be installed above the front entrance of the Masoch house.

The last time Mr. Polataiko was in Lviv, he tried to get a permit to do the installation. At first the city authorities were excited by the fact that an artist from Canada was going to honor a Lviv writer, but their enthusiasm waned when they found out in whom Mr. Polataiko was interested. The project is currently on hold, but Mr. Polataiko will try to get permission to go ahead the next time he is in Lviv. (In an article on Mr. Polataiko, a Canadian journalist makes the point that maybe the citizens of Lviv, as inhabitants of a post-colonial society, might have a hard time accepting the whip image.) Another example of aesthetisizing politics? But at least the literary reference point is easier to relate to than the blind mole. I make a note to check out the house on my next trip to Lviv.

A few weeks after my visit to Mr. Polataiko's studio, I hear that he is scheduled to have a show at The Power Plant in Toronto - the numero uno location for contemporary art in the city. Taras Polataiko is continuing not to disappoint those who started watching him two years ago.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 3, 1997, No. 31, Vol. LXV

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