Blue and gold are the prime colors of the inspiring and patriotic "Memorablis" photo exhibit at the CCA by Ukrainian photographer Vyacheslav Tarnovetskyi.
The first thing I saw walking into the street after seeing the “Memorabilis” exhibit at the Center for Contemporary Art was a beautiful old yellow Kyiv building against a backdrop of blue autumn sky. It was a nice coincidence, since the exhibit – a collection of photographs by the late Ukrainian photographer Vyacheslav Tarnovetyskyi, who passed away in 2002 – has at its center an incredible series of photographs entitled “Yellow and Blue.”
There’s a subtle Ukrainian nationalist theme to the series, but primarily these photos are cheerful, witty formal studies. In one shot, a window is filled with blue and yellow balloons stacked atop one another; in a second, a brilliant blue bucket glows in the midday sun, in the shadow of a bright yellow building.
“There is always something warm about the photographs; this is how he looked at the world,” says Jerzy Onuch, curator of the CCA. The way Onuch describes it, Tarnovetyskyi seems, in a good way, to have been an obsessive, photographing yellow and blue objects wherever and whenever he saw them.
Tarnovetyskyi was a physicist, a professor at the University of Chernivtsi, and it’s not surprising, as his pictures are suffused by a fascination for light, matter and energy.
One of the better pieces in the exhibit has an old yellow telephone just behind a hazy, barred window; reflected in the window is a baby blue car, hiding its reflection behind the bars.
Another has a woman on a bus looking out the window. By a trick of reflection, it looks like she’s looking into the face of the young boy sitting behind her. The image is framed by the yellow shirt of one passenger and the blue plastic bag of another.
Nothing in the exhibit is out of place; there is no shot that isn’t solid. Everything is clean, simple and illuminating, and in beautiful harmony. The composition, lighting and framing are wonderful.
It would be great to see the entire “Yellow and Blue” series, which Onuch says consists of around 90 pieces. Thirty-three are on exhibit here. The way they’re all unified by their gently nationalist theme makes them transcendent: from still lifes to images that could have come out of a photo album, they’re all ennobled by Tarnovetskyi’s art.
Center for Contemporary Art
(2 Skovorody, 238-2446)
Open Tue.-Sun. from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
