Dymchuk Gallery presents the exhibition Collection. Igor Gusev, continuing a series of projects dedicated to the gallery’s collection. The exhibition includes canvas paintings by the artist from 2010 to 2014.
Igor Gusev is an Odesa artist of the New Wave of Ukrainian contemporary art, a poet, author of performances, films, objects, and installations, a participant and organizer of numerous art events, leader of the Art Raiders movement, and founder of the underground gallery Norma and the one-painting gallery DOOORS in Odesa. The artist’s works have been presented at auctions by Sotheby’s, Phillips De Pury, and others. Born in 1970 in Odesa, he graduated from the Odesa Art School named after M. Grekov.
The exhibition takes the viewer back to the artist’s active creative period — a time when Gusev was honing his characteristic critical style: a combination of irony, grotesque, and almost cinematic visuality. The works from 2010 to 2014 touch on themes of power, personal myth, private fears, and social moods that preceded the events that would later radically change Ukraine.
The exhibition at the gallery is not a retrospective and does not attempt to summarize Gusev’s work. It is rather an “exposure” of one layer — the one preserved in the collection, which forms an internal portrait of the artist through what we once chose and have preserved today.
Anatoliy Dymchuk’s collection is among the largest in Ukraine, comprising mainly works by Ukrainian artists, particularly those from Odesa. It includes more than 3,000 art objects from the 19th to the 21st centuries, some of which are on display at the Dymchuk Gallery as part of the “Collection” project.