ZOOparking "Noah's Ark" has returned to Vitebsk

The representative and striking art project "ZOOparking "Noah's Ark", announced in 2011 as a triennial in Vitebsk, has returned to the Art Museum and become a significant event.

The initiator and curator of the republican exhibition is Oleg Kostogryz, an associate professor at the Department of Fine Arts of VSU named after P.M. Masherov, an artist known for his passion for the animalistic genre. And if the first exhibition organized by him demonstrated the presence of a "parallel world" in contemporary Belarusian art, then in the current one, the emphasis has shifted towards the relationship between two worlds – humans and animals.

The exhibition features 79 works – paintings, graphics, and sculptures by 36 artists from Vitebsk, Minsk, Brest, Grodno, Pinsk, Orsha, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, all of whom are renowned artists. The exhibition includes graphics by Belarusian graphic stars Yuri Yakovenko and Pavel Tatarnikov, the latter, as a reminder, is a two-time winner of the "Golden Apple" award at the Bratislava International Biennial of Illustrations (in book graphics, it's the equivalent of an "Oscar" in cinema), as well as works by Vitebsk masters Felix Gumen, Alexander Solovyov...

Interestingly, some works by renowned masters are showcased by equally famous artists whose collections they belong to. For instance, thanks to Lev Alimov from Brest, ex-libris from 1995 by our classic Arlen Kashkurevich are presented at the Vitebsk exhibition. An etching by artist Yuri Nozdrin from Moscow also made it into the "Animalistics" project by the well-known Moscow artist Sergei Tsigal, grandson of the writer Marietta Shaginyan. And this is not the only example.

The presented artworks contain many allegorical statements, where the author conveys their idea through the depiction of a particular living creature, a carrier of a specific symbol present in various cultural traditions.

The art project “ZOOparking “Noah's Ark” has a humanistic orientation. It can be of interest to both the viewer who contemplates wildlife and the viewer who is a philosopher, a child exploring the world, and a serious researcher of the genre.

 

Nataliya Krupitsa, "Vitbichi"