Denys Kravets
In 2011, I curated a solo exhibition by Denys Kravets at the Small Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv. Law of Similarity paired attention to the object with the question of how images, materials and surroundings change it.
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Law of Similarity
A solo exhibition by Denys Kravets that I curated at the Small Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal. Collages, photographs and works on paper shift the familiar perception of objects, their forms and surroundings.
Denys Kravets: objects and images
Collage and photography
In the collages, familiar characters — Pikachu and Bambi — appear among coloured lines, marks and image fragments. Photographs were shown alongside works on paper: the juxtaposition of surfaces and ways of depicting things extended the exhibition’s discussion of form and perception.
About the project
Law of Similarity asks what becomes visible when an object is considered apart from its decoration and its usefulness to people. Colour, form, transparency, density and weight cease to be secondary properties and become the conditions through which the object exists.
In everyday life, we tend to encounter things in passing, without attending to the forces that give them shape. The curatorial text proposes a closer kind of looking: an awareness of the energy that forms an object from within and the surrounding pressure that limits its expansion.
The background is therefore not empty. It has its own mass, density and form, acting on what appears to stand in front of it. Each detail becomes evidence of a relationship between expansion and limitation, inviting the viewer to reconsider the apparent separation between an object and its environment.