Tiara of Ghent Altar. Consisting of 12800 handpainted wooden eggs, 6x6m. Part of 303 pieces Post-vs-Proto-Renaissance. By Oksana Mas, 2011

Ukrainian Pavilion

54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

Oksana Mas

Project: Post-vs-Proto-Renaissance
Curators: Achille Bonito Oliva, Oleksiy Rogotchenko
Commissioner: Viktor Sydorenko
Organizers: Fedorova Cultural Foundation and Change Performing Arts

www.ghent-altarpiece.com

Art is the attempt to mend a bereavement, the loss of completeness and the descent into a partial and fragmentary world. In this regard, creation is the development and healing process of the artist who uses form as the crystal-clear evidence of a newfound wholeness. The sphere is the emblem of a circularity that flows and brings together, as shown in the history of art, which, ever since the Middle Ages, has always combined reason with instinct, rationality with spirituality. For several years now, Oksana Mas has been working on reclaiming the sphere as a geometric shape holding within itself a principle of universal oneness. The artist starts from the krashenki Ukrainian folk custom: wooden eggs covered in traditional decorations celebrating Easter. She gave the eggs, incarnation of the sphere, to inmates in women's penitentiaries, intellectuals and people working in various fields from forty-two different countries asking them to paint them.

The installation by the title Post-vs.-Proto-Renaissance presented at the Biennale di Venezia in the Pavilion of Ukraine is a section of the monumental work (m.92X134), composed by 3.640,000 wooden eggs. The iconographic reference is the work of the Van Eyck brothers, proto-Renaissance artists who painted “The gardens of paradise”, which can be seen on an altar in the Flemish city of Ghent. The eggs form a veritable architecture whose structure evokes a mosaic in which the eggs' iconographic tattoos constitute the single elements. Ancient and modern art merge into an image embracing stories of sins and dreams of redemption, hope in the future and a yearning for purity. Depending on the distance, the work breaks down as if it were a digital file of egg-pixels, each one representing the dramatic destiny of mankind. Contemplating the work of Oksana Mas is a form of initiation into a new life, a full life.

Venue
CHIESA DI SAN FANTIN, Sestiere San Marco, Venice
Preview: June 1–3, 2011
Public: June 4–November 27, 2011

www.ghent-altarpiece.com

International press contact Ukrainian Pavilion:
Change Performing Arts
Laura Artoni
t +39 02 4819 4494
f +39 02 4819 5178
laura.artoni@changeperformingarts.com