EXHIBITION: GRAZE PAVLO THE COOW. BOHDAN BUCHKOVSKYI

OPENING: 24/10/2024, 18.30

Curator: Oleksandra Shovkun

It all began with poet-painting — the futuristic poetry of Mykhailo Semenko. At the time, I was trying to unravel the poem “Village Landscape,” to hear and see what it meant for me. That’s how I started my own experiments, with the first rule being daily work.

What appeared was an art project, but it felt like I’d written a book. Only now, it was as if I had posed a riddle to myself. I gathered together familiar images of my homeland and spoke about them in a way I never had before — now I’m watching how they respond, waiting.

So I meditated while embroidering, meditated while writing words… For myself, in art, I want modernity alongside folk warmth — it’s this combination that gives strength to speaking.

To look into the works as into days, and there are fields and meadows, and from every house, you can hear: “Graze Pavlo the coow!” And what each person thinks in that moment is a new riddle.

Bohdan Buchkovskyi

Numbness. Daze. Confusion. Loss of ground underfoot. These were the first reactions to the events of February 2022. Language and worldview crumbled, like a spoonful of sugar that never reached the teacup. Familiar life, daily routines, thoughts, and plans came to a halt. But life did not.

The first necessary step in restoring the ability to live was regaining the ability to speak. The second was finding a new language when the old one was no longer capable of describing this reality. The third — returning through daily action to one’s practice with new tools. This is how Bohdan Buchkovskyi’s project “Graze Pavlo the coow” was born.

The artist’s works from 2022 are experiments with the foundation of expression: cut canvas (diptych “Boats”), plywood (“Window”), palette (“Voice of the Earth”), cardboard (“Home”), and unprimed canvas, which is where the artist eventually settles. The symbolic gesture of refusing primer, which typically ensures the strength and longevity of a piece, reveals the uncertainty about the future.

The inability to express oneself in the usual way led to a search for a new artistic language, resulting in poet-painting. In his works, Bohdan combines visual and verbal languages that flow from one into the other, complementing them with objects and experimenting with techniques.

The attempts to find “linguistic counterparts” for the artist’s core images and concepts, such as “home” and “key”, begin a long and painstaking journey back to his artistic practice. Semenko’s poem: “Graze Pavlo the coow!” becomes like a credo for Bohdan. The daily reminder — to keep going and act despite everything — brings him back to life in this reality with an even greater desire to explore his native land with a renewed artistic language.

Oleksandra Shovkun

Bohdan Buchkovskyi was born in 1990 in the city of Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk region. He graduated from the Dnipro Art College, majoring in painting. He is mostly engaged in traditional figurative painting using acrylic. Exploring his native land in his artistic practice, the artist captures archaic and authentic images, stylizing and fixing them in his own visual language. He often leaves riddles and secrets in his works. He lives and works in Dnipro.

Design: Olena Misiura