Mykola Matsenko
Born 1960 in the Prutivka village, Ivano-Frankivsk Region, Ukraine
© Photo from the artist's archive

In his creative practice, Mykola Matsenko explores the problem of identity in today’s globalized world, the rethinking of cultural and historical experience, the interaction of tradition and mass culture. Reinterpreting folklore and avant-garde and ironically reproducing the aesthetics of modern everyday life, fixed in stereotypes and objects of material culture, the artist outlines the complex contours of contradictory reality. His works are rich in symbols and contain many historical and cultural allusions and quotations. On this basis, the author creates his own symbolic system, personal “heraldry”, which often paradoxically combines habitual and extraordinary, beautiful and fearful, likes and phobias, past and present, from which the ornament of reality is woven.

"I have a feeling that the world is on the verge of radical change. We will either slip into the dark abyss or climb the shining peak. The place of the artist is in the team of Sherpas..."

Mykola Matsenko
Cherkasy, Ukraine. April 28, 2020

Calendar (2012)

160 x 160 cm, acrylic and marker on canvas

Contrary to the claims of scientists, the Mayan calendar turned out to be erroneous, and 2012 fell on 2020.

 

Mykola Matsenko, artist