Igor Abramovych and Sergei Sviatchenko - TWO AS ONE

The idea for the suprising collaboration entitled TWO AS ONE arose from a friendly
exchange of nature snapshots. Igor Abramovych would send Sergei Sviatchenko pictures of landscapes outside his home near Kyiv and from several trips abroad. One such photo from Igor’s winter walk with his dog in a field outside the village of Zalissia, not far from Kyiv, inspired Sergei to reinterpret the snapshot and to create a collage based on it. That collage launched a whole series of works created in coauthorship: Abramovych would take photos, and Sviatchenko would turn them into collages. The roiling energy of both coauthors—the passionate, enthusiastic and driven Abramovych and the seasoned Sviatchenko, always brimming with ideas and open to experiments and collaborations—gave rise to the TWO AS ONE project, consisting of two albums: Nature and Architecture.

Sergei was inspired by the sensuality and immediacy of Igor’s photos that demonstrated his personal understanding of natural and urban landscapes, his open and genuine approach to the environment and his authentic depiction of various emotional states. Sviatchenko had first noticed Igor’s optics back during their shared walk by the lake in Viborg, Sergei’s hometown in Denmark. Sergei was surprised by Igor’s poetic and direct approach to nature, which resonated with his personal understanding of landscapes and their importance in the creative process. Despite their different backgrounds, the coauthors were united by their relations to landscapes and their understanding of the environment.

The creative interpretation created in a collaboration between Igor’s camera lens and Sergei’s confident cuts and visions presents a new take on the fields and woods outside Kyiv, Verholy Park in the Poltava region (Ukraine), palms and beaches of Costa Blanca and Antalya, as well as Copenhagen’s laconic architecture. Nature comes in color whereas urban landscapes are markedly monochromatic. In contrast to the vitality and vibrant colors of Ukrainian countryside and southern tourist resorts in Spain and Turkey, Copenhagen’s laconic urban Scandinavian charm is depicted in black-and-white. Igor took these photos during his visit to see the premiere of the ballet Nightingale with Sviachenko’s scenography at the Royal Danish Theatre. Therefore, the two albums offer a generalized and deconstructed portrait of a European landscape. Landscapes are transformed and yield new surreal spaces borne of Dadaist form play. These collages in Sviatchenko’s recognizable style, paradoxical and sharp yet harmonious and delicate, deconstruct the original photos while preserving their atmosphere and the emotional states documented in them.

Sviatchenko has had an interest in the interface between nature and architecture since his very first steps in art. As a young boy, he visited the Kharkiv Museum of Art with his architect father and explored connections between nature, architecture and fine arts. As a student of the Department of Architecture, he later imbibed knowledge about the powerful effect of open and closed spaces both in nature and architecture, as well as their impact on people, in long conversations with his older colleague, Professor Antonov. The photos Igor took outside Kyiv, with their atmosphere, openness and recognizably central-European Ukrainian views that differ both from the austere North and from the vibrant South, reminded Sergei of his childhood in Kharkiv. Summertime trips to the town of Chuhuiv, sunlight shimmering on the water and between dense greenery of the forest, were imprinted on his retinas for years. The artist himself describes these memories as “flashes of childhood,” and that’s something that every person has in his or her memory. The play of light and shadows, contrasts, thin contours and startling combinations appear in many of his works like unexpected sunbursts in the darkened woods. In his photos, Abramovych managed to convey this genuine emotional state, the dynamics and vitality that stirred up Sviatchenko’s inner world and brought out a host of associations. TWO AS ONE project describes two visions merging into one on the level of sensory perceptions beyond the boundaries of rationality to create something new, as unexpected as it is authentic.

Nataliia Matsenko