It seems as though every Ukrainian inherits a love for the land. Ukrainians have shaped it into what it is—yellow and blue. In return, it shapes them into who they are: yesterday—laborers on their land, today—its defenders.
In the project “Kraing,” Vitalii Kravets focuses on the emotional relationship of Ukrainians to the land as a kind of constant, one that is now facing destruction. The sight of land plowed by machinery and scorched by artillery horrifies us almost as much as the sight of a body ravaged by war. In this project, Kravets captures both the physical death of the land and its spiritual rebirth in the eyes of those who care for it.
Certain absolutes take root in us from an early age through simple schemas. For Vitalii, it was his grandmother who instilled in him the image of what Ukrainian land looks like: a yellow field stretching to the horizon, and beyond that—blue sky. Most Ukrainians are familiar with this interpretation of the colors of our flag from childhood. When Vitalii looked at the flag his grandmother had sewn from two of his grandfather’s shirts—one blue and one yellow—he imagined a vast two-colored country and his grandfather, whom he had never seen in person.
The flag serves as a starting point in the observational series Kravets plans to continue until the end of the war. When and what that end will be is unknown, but the moment we are in now—the structural middle—is the artist’s focus. A mix of clay, oil, bodies, shattered trees, a lost horizon, and the now-familiar aerial view. So what do we actually see on the canvases? A landscape? A still life? Is this abstract impressionism or hyperrealism? Perhaps all of these at once, as this series defies clear stylistic or genre classification.
