For a short while OVCHARENKO gallery turns a “Tomb of the Prince of Tauride”. Crimean artist Sergey Zarva transforms the space of the gallery by himself.
Paintings and art-objects are demonstrated as the antiquities from the family tomb. The archetype of its is the burial hills and the ancient tombs of Scythian rules preserved till nowadays in the territory of Crimean peninsula.
Sergey Zarva connects antique bass-reliefs and household atmosphere of “grandmother’s apartment” with a distinctive satire of his art. The artist convinces that the nostalgia for the soviet period accompanied by the legend of Scythian gold is a part of Crimean attitude.
“Taurida citizens are living out their meager century in the ”black” steppes among the royal burial hills, they love to look back at the former glory of the rich ancient Greek empire. There was no Crimean who hadn’t a dream to find a Golden Horse hidden in the dungeon of Mitridat mountain. The mysterious magnificence of the buried treasure is still a “shimmering” and unachievable dream of a lazy and absurd people. Only trivial and silly wishes come true: imperceptible dark-green borrowed color tin, given basket of Black sea anchovy, hundred decayed brooms in the barn and fake dull shine of talentless relative’s portraits”.
(Sergey Zarva)
Sergey Zarva is living out in the sticks of the artistic life: you can find him at his private house near Kerch, far away from the big city’s gallery parties and endless events, he lives and works in the quietness and privacy. Zarva grew up in the USSR, then the country he lived became call Ukraine, now it’s a part of Russia. But Crimea according to the artist still stay a totally soviet island got stuck in the past: states change, the gap between the patriots and apposition expands but the heroes and lifestyle are staying the same.
Zarva operates priority with long-held visual patterns of the soviet period where is no criticism of the ideology but more satire over the common stereotyped image of the citizens which it’s still possible to see nowadays.
As a framework for his artistic paintings Zarva uses the households and studio backstage old photos 1970-1980s, also vintage posters and the soviet magazines such as “Ogonek” 1950s.
