"...it's so black that you can hardly see it", - this is how artist Anish Kapoor described his impression of vantablack, the blackest material in the world, after he acquired sole rights to use it. From Kapoor's words, it is clear that "black " opens before us a fundamental question — undermines the very ability to see. Black questions our confidence in the visible: it declares restraint and simplicity, and at the same time acts ambiguously and deceptively, when a flat surface descends into a depth that draws the eye and creates an experience.
Ihor Yanovych's exhibition "Black", with which the Ya Gallery art center in Lviv begins its activity, is personal enough so that the viewer can enter the subjective space of the author and feel his own experiences, but also more than a separate experience, because it turns out to the larger defining question: what is the experience of contemplation when black is at work?
The scope of the project is revealed in the context of Yanovych's personal practice, in whose painting series and sketches black plays the main role, as well as in the various works of artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Doesn't the "Black Square" begin the most fatal conversation about the fate of art? Kazimir Malevich's geometric black forms, square, circle and cross, Kapura's already mentioned super black, Ed Reinhardt's "black painting", Mark Rothko's chapel, rhythm, space, texture, gesture in the black works of Pierre Soulages, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, even the stencil graffiti of Banksy - through all these works, a rich history of color unfolds, reaching our subjectivity. After all, behind the decisions in favor of black in this list, completely different motives and contents are hidden - sacred, political, psychoanalytical.
However, black is also a non-color. In the works of the artist, he can testify to a certain refusal to work with color. And it is precisely this feature of black that is important for Yanovych, who is focused on a limited palette in order to achieve accurate sound. "Black" by Yanovych is a series about the independent behavior of matter (when paint flows or drips on the canvas) in combination with the author's gesture (when black lines resemble calligraphic forms or form controlled saturated or, on the contrary, disappearing spots). In these works, black is not the blackest , but one that materializes a subjective space, sensitive to the expression of different intensities, in which there is a place for a sharp gesture, waiting and observing the change of matter, dripping, relief and monochrome planes. Black here does not symbolize anything. It calls for insight and makes clear presence
Ever since music became the main reference point in Yanovych's works, since then his black sounds.
Boris Filonenko
