Oleksandr Matvienko (1970-2009) was a Ukrainian representative of Pop Art. His works became an integral part of the Ukraine art scene in the mid-1990s. It was then that the artist graduated from the Lviv State Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts (department of art glass), and began an active participant in Kyiv exhibitions.
As Hleb Vysheslavsky indicates in Matvienko’s canvases, the concreteness of the image is in constant struggle with the environment, which seeks to absorb it. Objects are usually static, and the environment is dynamic. Its variability depends on the process of gradual perception by the viewer of many rhythmic details of the painting. It is this juxtaposition of statics and dynamics, concreteness and chaos, clarity and uncertainty that constitutes the content of the artist’s works. Matvienko gives us the joy of seeing the secret in simple things reduced to symbols – a lonely donkey, a dog, a bicycle.
The artist’s work is deeply humanistic. These are the paintings of a romantic who dreams of simplicity and certainty of feelings among the noise and chaos of the modern world. His paintings remind us of sincerity and frankness in the midst of advertising, glossy artificiality and the din of the metropolis.