Serhiy Hai: Paintings

New York, NY—Art at the Institute is pleased to announce the start to its Fall 2016 season with an exhibition of paintings by Ukrainian artist Serhiy Hai. The exhibition will open Friday, October 14, 2016 with a reception for the artist at The Ukrainian Institute of America from 6 to 8 PM. It will remain on view through December 11, 2016. Curated by Walter Hoydysh, PhD, director of Art at the Institute, the exhibition will be the artist’s second solo show with The Ukrainian Institute.

Serhiy Hai: Paintings will feature four groups of paintings depicting iconic motifs traditional to the canon of western art: riders and horses, nudes, masks, and still-lifes. To be sure, the ideals represented are not motifs, as such—they are the medium for colors—colors that evoke the realities of infinite psychic depth, physical observation and associations with distant archaic ages. The archaic in Hai, his relationship to Etruscan art and culture, is not exclusively a decorative-historic reexamination of that era. Rather, it testifies to the simpler array of colors, tones, and forms that originate with the distant archaic. Hai frees himself from every form of strict academicism and Hellenism in order to carry on, with a contemporary sensibility, that early classic Greek tradition. There exists an inner connection between his chosen motifs—partly understood as symbols of a lost humanity (unidentifiable visages), partly as symbols of the mysteries of life on earth—and the forms that transmit them to us purely on the aesthetic.

By inherent practice, Hai is a formalist through and through; the School of Paris clearly plays on his pictorial affections. His process goes from inside to out, and the techniques of applied line, color, and form are the central components with which he works. This trinity would be nothing but pure abstraction were the perceived symbolic motifs not wholly incorporated in it.

Hai’s paintings are as much about surface and process as they are about subject and its subtlety. A proprietary application of aqueous oil and acrylic mediums affords the pigments to commingle in thin translucencies; sunken colors come to the surface as if from deep below the skin. Hai subjects the effects of light and color to the form in such a way that the latter receives absolute value—credible and self-absorbing. His brush seeks surfaces in order to feel them, caress them, and fondle them—this is a sensual (not erotic) refinement to his extension, and is also a means by which he awakens the notion of the “beautiful” from the depths of his imagination. This is how Hai surrenders to the visual splendor he makes and loves with such abandon. It lingers with him in the magic of residing silently in the studio.

Serhiy Hai was born in Lviv, Ukraine. In 1986, he graduated from the Lviv State Institute of Applied and Decorative Art. He is a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. The artist has participated in exhibitions throughout Ukraine, Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, and the United States, most recently with the TEW Galleries in Atlanta, GA. He lives and works in Lviv, Ukraine.

About Art at the Institute

Celebrating its sixty-second year, Art at the Institute is the the visual arts programming division ofThe Ukrainian Institute of America. Since its establishment in 1955, Art at the Institute organizes projects and exhibitions with the aim of providing post-war and contemporary Ukrainian artists a platform for their creative output, presenting it to the broader public on New York’s Museum Mile. These heritage projects have included numerous exhibitions of traditional and contemporary art, and topical stagings that have become well-received landmark events.

The Ukrainian Institute of America, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the art, music and literature of Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora. It serves both as a center for the Ukrainian-American community and as America’s “Window on Ukraine,” hosting art exhibits, concerts, film screenings, poetry readings, literary evenings, children’s programs, lectures, symposia, and full educational programs, all open to the public. Founded in 1948 by William Dzus, inventor, industrialist, and philanthropist, The Ukrainian Institute is permanently housed in the Fletcher-Sinclair mansion at 2 East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue. The building is designated as a National Historic Landmark and protected as a contributing element of the New York Metropolitan Museum Historic District.

Exhibition hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 12 – 6 PM, or by appointment.

For further information: Please contact Olena Sidlovych, Executive director, at (212) 288-8660 or mail@ukrainianinstitute.org.