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[May 22nd 2003]
Interview
Sergei Sviatchenko: Mixedlandscape
Sviatchenkos nature
Interview with Sergei Sviatchenko
The Danish-Ukrainian artist Sergei Sviatchenko
(1952) exhibits his own personal nature at the Jens Nielsen and
Olivia Holm-Møller Museum in Holstebro. With Mixedlandscape,
the artist describes life as it unfolds around us. “It’s
my nature, my lifestyle, my thoughts,” says Sviatchenko. Interview:
Sune Højrup Bencke Photo: Flemming Jeppesen
Translation: David Duchin
Sergei Sviatchenko
Mixedlandscape
13 April – 18 May 2003
Jens Nielsen and Olivia Holm-Møller Museum
Nørrebrogade 1, 7500 Holstebro
tel: +45 97 42 18 24
art@postkasse.com
Sergei Sviatchenko
Sergei Sviatchenko – a Danish artist with Ukrainian
roots – has lived, worked and created in Denmark for nearly
13 years. Originally educated as an architect at the state school
in Kharkov, his practice in the past has been concentrated on the
union of art and architecture. The grey areas between art and fashion,
art and music and art and architecture have all informed his work
in Denmark. Sviatchenko finds the overlapping of art genres inspirational.
A productive man, this 50-year-old artist recently opened Senko
Studio, a gallery featuring international solo exhibitions,
in his Danish hometown Viborg.
With Sergei Sviatchenko’s current show at the Jens Nielsen
and Olivia Holm-Møller Museum in Holstebro we see the third
and last chapter of an exhibition trilogy that started at Kunsthallen
Brænderigården in Viborg three years ago. The second
chapter was shown at the school of architecture in Aarhus, and this,
the last chapter, is concentrated on what Sviatchenko calls his
‘own nature’. But that shouldn’t be taken literally.
Because even though the logo for the exhibition is a light blue
oak leaf, photocopied and manipulated from one of the main pieces
in the exhibition, an image of the artist’s children against
a background motif taken from Dollerup Bakker in Jutland, this show
is much more about the artists own personal nature.
 
 
What’s Mixedlandscape about?
The show is about my nature. My lifestyle, my thoughts, my view
of fashion. So, nature has a double meaning in Mixedlandscape, but
it’s first and foremost about my nature.
So it’s about your life? Life in general?
It’s a collage of life as it unfolds around us. I describe
the things that excite me right now. Mixedlandscape represents my
culture and my reaction to the world around me. The exhibition represents
me, so it has to be original, unique and personal. It has to be
my universe.
You work a lot with collage. Tell us about what that genre means
for you…
Even though this show has areas specific to installation, painting,
video and other things, I regard all art as collage and therefor
refuse to call myself a multi-artist. All art can be collage. All
art is collage in my eyes. Because when you work as an artist you’ve
got so many ideas in your head. In there you’ve already got
a collage. That’s the way I see it, lots of ideas together
is a collage. A collage is a global understanding of the world.
I see the world as a big collage.
 
You work with both art and fashion and their intersection. What
have you created specific to this intersection?
In Mixedlandscape there is a video installation called Wintersummer
that portrays the hectic milieu of the fashion show from the very
first step on the catwalk. I recorded it just before the opening
of one of Paul Smith’s shows recently. I was also invited to
Levi’s 150 year anniversary in Berlin not so long ago, where
I painted on customised jeans and T-shirts and created a few one-offs.
 
Why did you open the Senko Studio?
Because I wanted to focus on a few ideas I was working with
back in the Soviet Union. Specifically to invite artists there to,
regardless of where they come from, work and develop their practice.
The idea is that Senko Studio will create a relationship
between artists of different backgrounds and nationalities, but
who all work with new media – installation, video, performance
and drawings. At the moment I’m showing the Italian artist
Stefano Giuriati, and soon it will be the American artist Jack
Sal with a tribute to the deceased professor from the Royal
Academy in Copenhagen Albert Mertz. Senko Studio is also
being represented at the Venice Biennale in May and June, probably
with Jack Sal showing Red/White.
 
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