"New Figures, New Faces" exhibit to open in Toronto (12/27/98)

"New Figures, New Faces" exhibit to open in Toronto

by Yuriy Diakunchak

TORONTO - The art exhibit "New Figures, New Faces" will open at the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation in Toronto on December 27 and runs until January 27, 1999. The exhibit, curated by Toronto artist Petro Lopata, will showcase the talents of young, mostly Canadian, artists of Ukrainian heritage.

According to Mr. Lopata's mission statement, the show is an attempt to take the pulse of contemporary figures and portraiture being created by young Ukrainian artists. It reads: "This may give us a glimpse, albeit in embryonic form, of what to expect in the art of the early portion of the new millennium."

Mr. Lopata has been working on getting young artists together, in fits and starts, over the past few years. In 1997 he helped organize an exhibit titled "Young Art: Lviv-Toronto" at the UCAF, which showcased artists from Canada and Ukraine. He also participated in "Rising Stars of Ukraine and Canada" in Charlotte, N.C. that same year, and other group shows in earlier years.

"'New Figures, New Faces' has been germinating in the back of my head for a while now because of the other shows that I have done," said Mr. Lopata in a recent interview. "One of the defects of previous shows I put together was this lack of a common thread running through the works, other than that the artists were young and Ukrainian," said the 25-year-old Mr. Lopata.

"One thing that bugs me about group shows is when they lack a thematic consistency. It turns into a store setting, where everything is 'commodified.' There's no point to the show except to sell stuff. 'New Figures, New Faces' not only connects the theme of the show, but also describes the people participating," Mr. Lopata said.

As the title of the new show suggests, it will focus on the human face and figure. "The figure has been a source of inspiration since the Venus of Willendorf 30,000 years ago," the curator said. "Running all through art history there is this thread of figurative art ... from the Scythian "baby" [found in the Ukrainian steppes] - all the way to the New Realists in the 1990s," said Mr. Lopata.

According to its organizer, the show's name has a double meaning. It serves as a general description of the art to be shown, but also refers to the artists themselves. Most of them will be new to many gallery visitors. "One thing I was trying to achieve with this show is find those people not known to the Ukrainian art-going public in Toronto," Mr. Lopata said. "In a way I am bringing them back into the fold."

In part, the "New Faces" curator sees the show as a response from youth to the question of the future of the Ukrainian community in the coming millennium, a topic currently being debated in North America. "I can say for Toronto, we are doing okay. You don't have to worry about Ukrainian art dying out here," he noted.

Mr. Lopata said he hopes the show will help strengthen the community as a whole by supporting emerging talent, at the same time he hopes to give the artists "firm footing within the profoundly uncertain art business ... by providing them with exposure to the public at large ... and the potential for financial reward."

Mr. Lopata began organizing this show by mailing out some 700 pamphlets to galleries, art schools, museums and Ukrainian organizations across North America. Half of the pamphlets went to non-Ukrainian organizations in the hope of reaching young Ukrainians who are not actively involved in the community. He received responses from as far away as Brazil.

Only one artist from the United States will be at the show, which narrows the focus of the show to a mostly Canadian exhibit. "To be honest with you, I was hoping for a better response from the States," the organizer said. "I haven't gotten many responses, even though most of my information packets went there."

Other problems included initial hostility from the the UCAF board. "As soon as I approached UCAF to do this, there was already some of the older generation saying 'Oh, look at the big curator!' " But that sentiment passed quickly and now Mr. Lopata said these erstwhile critics want him to join their organization, the Ukrainian Association of Visual Artists of Canada, to inject some fresh blood.

Mr. Lopata also said he worries his show may fall victim to the UCAF board four-person Art Committee's recent proposal to reserve final say over any paintings included in exhibits at the UCAF.

The curator is worried that a piece by multi-media artist Roman Lysiak may draw the ire of the committee. Roman Lysiak's untitled mixed media work - a box with five slides on metal runners - requires its audience to interact with the work by pulling the slides out. "Instead of the normal, static dialogue with a work of art, in which the only physical occurrence is the viewer's bombardment with patterns of light and color," Mr. Lopata explained, "the viewer becomes an actual kinetic participant in the process of the work's unfolding and is met with a startling final image that breaks down notions of prejudice and comments on the frailty of human expectations."

That said, he fears the committee will find the piece inappropriate for the gallery because it is so far removed from the typical visual art displayed there.

Though Mr. Lopata provided $500 of his own funds to start the mail-outs, he has since received a $2,200 grant from the Shevchenko Foundation through the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Toronto branch. The grant money will be used to print a catalogue of the works exhibited and will include biographical sketches of participating artists.

Artists whose work is slated to appear in the show include Mr. Lysiak, holographist Miroslawa Betlej, painter Marko Koropecky, print maker Oksana Movchan, photographer Terry Pidsany, woodworker and painter Ihor Polischuk, photographer Vitali Pozdniakov, painter Marina Pribytkov and painter Christina Yarmol, all from Toronto. Also participating will be painter Andrij Korchynsky from Philadelphia, textile artist Barry Goodman from Montréal, painter Janet Prebushewsky-Danyliuk from Saskatoon and painter Nazar Hrytzkiv currently from Prague.

Messrs. Hrytzkiv, Pozdniakov, Korchynsky and Polischuk, Ms. Movchan and Ms. Pribytkov are originally from Ukraine. Ms. Betlej is originally from Poland.

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