Born in 1987 in Poninka, Ukraine, he is active in the fields of graphic art, installation, performance, street art, photography and poetry. Futymskyi also curated group shows at Dzyga Gallery in Lviv in 2013 and Labirynt Gallery in Lublin in 2017.
Yaroslav Futymskyi, The Cry [GL, GA], installation, 2005-2017, photo by Wojciech Pacewicz
The bewitching simplicity and poetics of Yaroslav Futymskyi’s works, a young Ukrainian artist, derives from temporariness and impermanence of materials which he uses. When creating his works, Futymskyi takes advantage of found objects, or the cheapest ones, connected with everyday life, available in the most ordinary surroundings. He is kind of retro. When he takes photos, he does it with an analog or automatic cheap camera, very often leaving everything to chance. It may be claimed that his strategy consists in making simple things look extraordinary in an avant-garde way, so-called ostranenie which was described by Wiktor Szkłowski, and thanks to which this luftmensch and profligate, being constantly on the road between Lviv, Lublin, Poninka, Uzhgorod, Warsaw, Rivne, and Wroclaw, without a permanent place of residence nor a computer, has started to look differently at everyday reality.
In Lublin and Białystok Futymskyi is going to show train tickets he has been collecting, documenting his last few years of life and his nomadic lifestyle. Reminiscent of childlike collection habits and motivated by the delight in the everyday, Futymskyi’s work is a reflection of the precarious existence of the artist who is doomed to travel constantly in order to work and survive, even if it is his conscious choice.
