Oleksandr Hnylytskyi is one of the few contemporary Ukrainian artists who was among the first to start experimenting with the medium. Working with painting, installation, performance, and video, Hnylytskyi always created his own sense of space and reality. He bought details for his objects at the Kyiv Sennyi Market. Later, his daughter Kseniia Hnylytska would create a series of landscapes of now non-existent Kyiv places, one of which would be the Sennyi Market. Hnylytskyi was primarily known as an experimenter, inventor, “Kulibin” and “Dad” (that’s what he was called in “Parkom” — the squat at 18 Mykhailivska Street where he lived with his family).
His hands, as critic Volodymyr Levashov noted, “animate the primary impulse, construct a ‘mechanism’ (it doesn’t matter what it represents — painting, a mechanical device, or a communicative situation), through which the abstraction of the idea becomes an aesthetic object in space.” Kseniia Hnylytska, the artist and his daughter, recalls and tells KORYDOR what “Dad” was like.
Kseniia Hnylytska: I remember that in childhood I was fascinated by jazz for a while. So when we lived in Parkomuna, I used to go to Klymenko [artist Oleksandr Klymenko — editor’s note] to listen to jazz — he had a good music collection. I don’t remember how old I was then.
Katerina Yakovlenko: I read in ArtUkraine that you took part in one of your father’s performances — about the sleeping princess.
K. H.: It was the “Carrying the Coffin” action, I think. Once everyone gathered and decided there was no point in sitting around, it was time to get ready. And they carried the coffin. They wandered into a park where the Friendship of Peoples arch stood. They agreed to shoot in one of the premises. And each person took turns lying in a glass coffin. Meanwhile, Hnylytskyi’s poetry was being read. There is video documentation of this performance.
K. Y.: But how was it? Did someone come up to you and say, “Ksyusha, lie down!” or did you offer yourself?
K. H.: (smiles) No, it was a game. And besides, you want to do the same as the adults do. I didn’t perceive it any differently. And in general, death is an abstract concept for children.
K. Y.: Is this the only work of your father’s you participated in, or was there something else?
K. H.: There were also photographs. At first, they photographed all of us, and then sometimes my father painted pictures from these friendly, family photos. Like “Danae” or “Stereo-Ksyusha.” On some fabrics, used in some decorations. Also, my father often used his paintings as backdrops for photography.
K. Y.: At that time, life was like a continuous performance, a constant game. What was childhood like under such conditions?
K. H.: Everything interested me. In psychology, there is a concept — denial of denial. It’s when Magritte kept painting his clerk father, but I, on the contrary — I wanted such a clerk father, “normal” parents, but I had different parents who were always embarrassed at some parent meetings.
K. Y.: You mentioned that you can’t imagine not being an artist because your parents taught you everything. When and at what age did they start talking to you about art? How did it happen?
K. H.: Actually, no one told me anything special. I even tried to nag: “Why don’t you tell me anything, Dad?” And he said, “Go read a book, I don’t know anything myself” (laughs). Actually — he did tell. Just if he were asked to explain specifically, he wouldn’t be able to teach, but casually, incidentally — yes.
I have been preparing a book for a long time, and here is a short phrase (opens printouts, reads): “My father, Oleksandr Hnylytskyi, was an artist, and we lived in a commune with other artists. You could say I literally grew up in the midst of creativity. In childhood, I was often involved as a model or assistant. Once I helped my father in a very beautiful photo project “Embryotopia,” the idea of which was to show an adult in the pose of an embryo; the shooting was done underwater.”
K. Y.: How did he work, how did he come up with his projects?
K. H.: He experimented constantly and inspired me with that. It seemed he always knew how everything should look. He had a kinetic sculpture in which a grandmother crossed herself. There was a miner hitting the floor with a helmet. His whole history with kinetic projects impressed me. There was Marta Kuzma’s project in Livadia, with Chychkan, Tsyupka participating. And my father made “Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.” There a boy takes off his Bavarian pants, and a girl lifts her skirt. Or, for example, a sculpture of phalluses overgrown, where wide grooves were made on clay objects in which watercress was grown, chlorophalluses. So he always experimented. He read somewhere about this watercress, which grows well. I was always curious if there were other options, why he chose exactly this one.
K. Y.: Where did he read all this? There was no internet. What books did you have? For example, Oleksandr Klymenko said that your father was impressed by the “Book of the Dead,” which he gave him. Later he gave it to Savadov, who made his own photo series.
K. H.: That’s why I don’t throw away the book “Notes on Japan” from 1984. I probably have such a cultural tradition in the family that any foreign magazine is a mega-valuable thing, inspired by which you can paint a whole series of paintings. It’s like a black-and-white daguerreotype, a frame from the past that you carry in a completely different postmodern perspective. It’s not my method, but the habit remained. And these “Notes on Japan” are windows to the past.
For example, when a new book or some magazine about contemporary art appeared in the library at that time, whoever came first to the library started painting like that first. The same, but their own (laughs).
(reads): Here’s more: “Hnylytskyi bought a typewriter for the Paris Commune at a commission shop and gave it to me,” says Oleksandr Solovyov, art critic, curator. “Because we had to print texts, and at that time it was quite a problematic task. We started testing it, and Ksyusha tested it. She began typing various texts with her fingers, and one impressed me forever. That day she was recording different impressions. For example, mom was cooking onion soup. After which a logical question arose: what about dad? Well, dad was rolling a joint. And Sasha exhibited this text along with his graphics at the gallery in the Soros Center at NaUKMA. He showed it along with his other texts. Later this text will be at the exhibition “Securities.” That’s all so far from my book “Milestones.””
K. Y.: Regarding your father’s texts, he had quite a few. What do you think it was connected with — a desire to explain something to people, to provide a philosophical concept, or something else? Could he have not written at all?
K. H.: I can say that I didn’t know my father very well. He was always in some internal dialogue, and he wasn’t always accessible to me or others. And, pretending to be such a “handyman,” he was actually a very educated person. He constantly bought books, read a lot. Maybe it was still the Soviet thirst for education. That is, a guy born in Chuhuiv has an opinion and point of view. This is a much more progressive step than just being born into an artist’s family. Such a breakthrough. And it all starts with some school questionnaires, demobilization albums. Then it turns into some collections, texts.
Yes, we have our own Jim Morrison — Oleg Holosiy, and after his death everything changed. It was no longer so fun for everyone, the “sexual” and “drug” revolution paused, and everyone hid in their little houses.
K. Y.: How did your father take Holosiy’s death?
K. H.: Traditions changed, and the attitude toward the past became different. Psychoanalysis developed, and now it was no longer just “what was, is gone”: he began to comprehend everything, to figure out why it all happened. So, as it seems to me, he perceived everything differently, not brushing off the past in hedonistic revelry, in that “dance during the plague,” so beloved by us. Maybe it’s also connected with the fact that he lived in Munich and had the distance to think about everything and not embellish the situation.
K. Y.: You said he didn’t teach you specifically, but he told you how to paint. Can you recall any examples?
K. H.: He said: “It needs to be beautiful, like this. What are you doing here?” (laughs). For some time I was his apprentice and tried to stay close to him until the end. At the same time, I had the band R.E.P., which has a completely different direction.
K. Y.: How did he react to your group?
K. H.: Actually, like many: at first he said “not funny,” but then he supported a lot and spoke well of it. But for that generation of artists, it was important that it be funny and not simple. Because if it’s simple and not funny, it’s perceived by them as propaganda, which, of course, everyone got tired of.
My father’s work can be very conditionally divided into three periods: “curly” Hnylytskyi, then pictorial and object, media, and then a return to painting — already in a completely different quality, with extraordinary skill and ease of expression.
K. Y.: When he moved from objects to painting, why do you think he returned?
K. H.: Comfort and experience. I think his experience working in the film industry was very important. He worked in a team of animators and painted backgrounds, studied the history of science fiction.
K. Y.: What period was that, how long did he do it?
K. H.: It was the 2000s. He then moved to Munich with his wife and colleague Lesia Zaiats. I roughly remember, Lesia [Zaiats] would tell more. And he then had a studio in Munich, on Leonrodplatz, where now there are artists’ houses, and there are theaters, a chamber music hall. And there he began to paint large works. In general, at the end he painted with water-soluble oil paints, which give such a watercolor, poetic fluidity.
K. Y.: And from his early works — is there anything that has not been preserved? What is the volume of these works?
K. H.: We don’t have many early works. Most of the works are in the Gradobank collection, it seems. They were presented at the “New Wave” exhibition. We have a few works that were presented at the Cadavre ex? exhibition.
K. Y.: I know that your father mixed oil with linseed oil, so some early works cracked.
K. H.: Earlier artists thought their works, like American authors’, would immediately end up in museums; no one assumed their works would be removed from canvases (laughs). Of course, linseed oil is not very plastic, and nitro enamel, which they also worked with, breaks during folding. So, of course, such things need to be stored in large wide tubes, or better — stretched. But these are expenses, specifics of that time: you buy blue FC and strontium yellow and a lot of white nitro enamel — and you can paint a big green painting. A whole ocean! Cheap and beautiful. But this also says a lot about that time. For example, works painted with bright acrylic fade over time from sunlight. The specifics of materials. If stored properly, nothing like that happens.
K. Y.: What else do you remember from that conditional “hungry period”?
K. H.: I remember once my father and I made two diplomas on commission. I was his apprentice. I painted not very responsible fragments there; he didn’t trust me with figures.
K. Y.: He himself didn’t finish the academy. After some time, didn’t he want to return to finish it?
K. H.: He wanted to, but against the background of some general situation and illness, everything went to the background. And no one ever asked for a diploma. No one offered a studio from the Artists’ Union either, although my father always paid dues.
Here is a rather strange topic: what happens to an artist after he dies. I don’t know how it works. After all, a dead artist also has some right to space — for archiving his materials, for example. And the whole situation looks like this: two months — to move out.
K. Y.: And regarding the exhibitions they participated in, what do you remember then?
K. H.: I remember being impressed by the exhibition “Space of Cultural Revolution,” 1994. I was impressed by how banal and cool they changed the space by putting works behind a fence and placing binoculars. But in general — all exhibitions were oriented toward Moscow.
K. Y.: What expectations did he have from Moscow?
K. H.: Everyone then had expectations connected with Moscow. And everything was done so that all expectations were connected with Moscow.
K. Y.: What did his studio look like, what was there?
K. H.: There was an improvised order. But since they lived there, only one room was hung with paintings. He exhibited installations there — “Night Traveler” or something like that, I don’t remember exactly. There was a silhouette of a man, a ceramic vagina on a velvet cushion, a mannequin (most likely referring to the installation “Key and Moon Hunter,” first exhibited in 1991 at the “Artists of the Paris Commune” exhibition — editor’s note). So sometimes some installation was built in the house. Or, for example, a painting with Jesus in New York served as a background for photos: if you stood in Jesus’s place, it turned out you were in New York.
K. Y.: How did they communicate with each other in Parkom? How often did they gather together, and where?
K. H.: On the fifth floor, where we were, the first door was Solovyov’s. But it was more like an office. His room and the other with a sofa were hung with posters from exhibitions. And probably the typewriter was there. Also, Kavsán, it seems, was there, then Hnylytskyi. Then it became the realm of Natalia, my mother: as the hostess, she felt responsible for who should stay late and who shouldn’t, what to feed people at the party, etc., so she took on the functions of housekeeping and management. For example, she once kicked out Avdey Ter-Oganyan, who drank a lot of port wine. But I don’t remember that. At the end of the corridor lived Tsaholov and Klymenko. Klymenko, by the way, tried to label everything, and even in the toilet there was a note “Wash hands” with an arrow. He wanted some order everywhere. Because the rest lived differently, dressed like poets, in jabots. Such a bohemia detached from reality in contrast to the presentable Klymenko.
K. Y.: Where did they get those jabots?
K. H.: Probably from the Sennyi Market. And then a couple of years later I wore those things back to the market, trying to sell them. Then the market disappeared, and I painted its ruins.
K. Y.: Are there any things left?
K. H.: There was a wonderful thing, I don’t know where it disappeared. There was a device on which the planets of our Solar System were mounted, and they rotated in different directions at different speeds. The very presence of such a device made people richer, although its use was quite narrow. Brooches, cufflinks. I have some things left, but I don’t collect them anymore, just keep them.
K. Y.: Did your father collect anything?
K. H.: He sometimes went for bread but came back with meat and some detail from a house — a cast-iron capital he found on the way.
K. Y.: Did he then use it somehow?
K. H.: Of course. When he did the interior of Lesia Zaiats’s apartment, he used various elements. So everything was not just like that.
K. Y.: And what did he give you for your birthday?
K. H.: He always gave gifts. He made a celebration if someone reminded him. There are relatives who think that doing good every year is necessary, and birthdays are not important. But my father was not one of those people. He always gave a celebration. Everything was beautiful and spectacular. And the space was decorated: a Dutch still life, a bottle of wine. So visually it was very beautiful.