Vasyl Bazhay - recent years.
The art phenomenon for the artist is something like the way to the penetration of Absolute. Every time using the canvas for expressing his ideas, he asks himself different questions and soon finds the answering.
We can distinguish a few basic ways in which artist's needs and searching are developing. Firstly, it is learning of peculiarities between the space and time, surface and 3-D, point and line, white and black... Secondly - the experimental investigations in the sphere of synthesis of the space and the surface, canvas and three-dimensional object - installation. Bazhay's installation, as direct element of the space composition, appears on his second personal exhibition in 1990 and since that time accompanies all next one-man-shows. Thirdly, the artist apprehends an Art as some semantic system, accordingly - works of art are transforming to the units (signs) of such a system. That is the explanation of exaggerated signs in his works created during 1994 - 1996, which can get deeply into the meaning of signification. Fourthly, he gets into the thin matter of sound and works with it in the same way as with the canvases or three-dimensional objects, creating a "vibration row" and connecting it with other elements in general conception.
Besides 3-D objects and canvases Bazhay likes to use performance art. It became the main connector between the space and other elements of general composition of the exhibition. The Performance and action art help him to involve into the exhibition not only works of art, but also human element, i. e. the audience. The exhibition can be apprehended only when this human factor appears, because after such involving the exhibition leaves the being-for-itself and transforms into the modus of being-for-audience sensivity.
Constructing his works under the influence of unconsciousness and projecting his ideas on the system of contemporary philosophical problems Bazhay reaches interesting results. Very often he begins the discourse with his works and it seems that the artist was not the creator of the art objects, but, quite opposite, - the work forces him to create these canvases and installations.
Performance art induces the artist to use all organs of sense, such us hearing, eyesight, smell and even taste. Often he uses the audio- and video-technology. While the first one create suitable vibration background, the second transfer the action into the boundless TV-space by pulling it out from everyday life.
The great example of peculiarities that have been already described we can find on exhibitions taken place in Lviv, Kyiv and Gmunden (Austria) in 1994 - 1996. They are different to those from 1991 - 1993. At these last we notice a wide using of installation, video- and performance arts, as the main elements of the general conception. After all, Bazhay works with the connection between 3-D objects, oil canvases and performances since 1974, when he made interesting researches in the theater experimental structure. Since that time the artist works upon this problem. During the exhibition in 1994 the wide uses of the installation help him to introduce the main idea of connection between texts and images. But the culminating moment of installation's grate using happened during the joint austro-ukrainian project in Gmunden in 1994.
Next year was epochal for the artist. Many of us could see Bazhay's new conceptions where texts were changed by the graphical accordance of the music, namely - the notes. The exhibition "Piano-Forte II" in 1996, became the organic continuation of 1995 project "Forte-Piano" dedicated to the 1-st International Festival of Contemporary Classic Music "Contrasts' 95" in Lviv. Twelve meters long installation and the artist's action with it represented ontological idea of human being's deep involving into the essential sphere of the work of art.
Every Bazhay's exhibition united by one great idea of direct contact between the artist and the work of art. Such a contact opens for him new ways of understanding and new inexhaustible resources in creating the pure idea of Art.
Roman Hankevych
art critic.
