Vasyl Tkachenko (Lyakh)
untitled, 2022, oil on canvas, 200 x 210 cm
untitled, 2024, oil on canvas, 210 x 200 cm
Vasyl works with different media—painting, film, photography and music. Their combination and interplay form an organic part of his artistic thinking and language. The artist explores the themes of memory and identity.
Vasyl’s artistic practice as a painter effectively began with the full-scale invasion. He then moved from Kyiv to an artist friend in Lviv. His parents were in occupied Mariupol, and it was impossible to contact them. To distract himself from grief and distressing news, Vasyl began to paint. One of his first works, which initiated the series ‘Untitled’—a large-format canvas depicting the effects of an explosion as the artist imagined it—was created in Lviv. The pieces from this series form a kind of diary that records Vasyl’s state at the time, based on his memories, conversations with loved ones and documentary photographs. Lacking formal artistic training, he painted intuitively, guided by instinct, unconcerned with proportions or composition, focusing instead on the act of painting itself and on the personal experiences he wished to express. The artist devised his own performative method of constructing a composition and telling a story—first photographing himself in different poses, then inviting friends to join him in staging the scenes he wanted to portray on canvas.
Now Vasyl pays greater attention to technique and compositional structure. One of his latest works—also untitled—shows a man who is sleeping, or perhaps dead, in a steppe overgrown with feather grass, or perhaps on the seashore—in Mariupol? Its balanced composition, carefully chosen colours, tonal range and meticulously refined details mark a new stage in the artist’s practice. Yet the uncertainty and ambiguity of Vasyl’s imagery remain unchanged—they continue to remind us of the war.
