Sergei Sviatchenko
| Sergei Sviatchenko | |
|---|---|
| 240px | |
| Born | October 7, 1952 Kharkov, Ukraine |
| Nationality | Dansk |
| Occupation | Visual Artist |
Contents
Biography
Sergei Sviatchenko (born 1952 in Kharkiv) is a Ukrainian-born artist who has lived in Denmark since 1990. Sviatchenko graduated from Kharkov School of Architecture in Kharkov in 1975, and in 1986 he studied a Ph. D. at the School of Architecture in Kiev.
Sergei Sviatchenko is a provocateur in the world of contemporary art, Sviatchenko's collages and paintings have been exhibited in Denmark, Germany, Italy, France, England, Canada, and the USA. Drawing on and harnessing all of the cultural tides he has experienced in 40 years of image-making, Sviatchenko’s oeuvre spans the known and the unimaginable. It cuts through the boundaries of traditional and contemporary visuals to merge pop culture with politics, personal memory with collective histories, and architecture and science with the logic of dreams.
Sviatchenko has worked with a broad range of subjects and media. He experiments, challenges, and abolishes where other artists move within established comfort zones. From his early work as a conceptual artist and collage maker, he moved on to abstract painting and has done commissions and large-scale murals for international brands and institutions.
From the middle of the 1970s, Sviatchenko preferably worked with collages, and from the middle of the 1980s he worked mainly with paintings.
In 2002 he founded Senko Studio, non-profit exhibition space where for 7 years Sviatchenko, as curator, presented various pieces of art produced by emerging and promising artists and photographers.
In April 2009 he founded Close Up and Private, a fashion-forward photography project dedicated to the visual language of style and celebrating classic details and contemporary looks through unique photographic documentary. More recently he has worked with brands such as Costume National, Gant Rugger, Dickies and Jack & Jones by Premium making an artist take on their collections.
The inspiration to Sviatchenko's art, comes from Surrealism and Constructivism. Sergei's father, Evgenij Sviatchenko, who was a professor of architecture and an artist himself, was nevertheless Sergei's most important source of inspiration. Evgenij showed his son Russian art from the Russian avant-garde(1910-1934) in which the white colour in particular was crucial for light and space.
For Sviatchenko, work with collage is a result of what is known as "archetypes" – inherent psychological structures that are to be found in "the depths of the collective unconscious". Carl Jung introduced the concept of "archetypes" into science and believed that the archetypes serve as a nourishing basis for the creative imagination.
In 2012, Gestalten published ”"Everything Goes Right & Left if You Want It. The art of Sergei Sviatchenko" , a two-volume set with a book of collages and another about his paintings.
Sergei Sviatchenko is the father of footballplayer Erik Sviatchenko.
Work
Literature
- Sviatchenko, Sergei. Sergei Sviatchenko, Borgens Forlag, 2002
- Sviatchenko, Sergei. Sergei Sviatchenko: Paintings & Others 1991-2006, Hovedland, 2006
- Supergraphics. Unit Publishing, London, 2010
- RARACURIO - Sergei Sviatchenko: Art, Archetypes and Philosophy, 2010
- CUT & PASTE, 21ST Century Collage. Laurence King Publishing, London, 2011
- Cutting Edges, contemporary collage. Gestalten, Berlin 2011
- Everything Goes Right & Left If You Want It: The Art of Sergei Sviatchenko 2012
- The Age of Collage: Contemporary Collage in Modern Art. Gestalten, Berlin 2013
- Sergei Sviatchenko: Collages Edited by Rick Poynor, Schlebrugge Editor, Vienna, Austria
