Warm Optics. Lucy Ivanova

Lucy Ivanova’s major solo show was conceived as an attempt at a retrospective look at her practice before the full-scale invasion. It was meant to open on February 25, 2022, at the Artsvit Gallery in Dnipro — her hometown and the first milestone on her professional path. Three years later, the artist, with the Artsvit Gallery and curators Liza German and Maria Lanko, returns to the moment when the unopened exhibition collided with the full-scale war. This moment becomes a new starting point for narrating Lucy’s art across two periods.

The "before" period traces the formation of the artist’s painterly language — first within the Ukrainian academic system, then in the field of contemporary art. The "after" period marks a reinvention of herself and her practice under the conditions of emigration and motherhood. During this time, she has presented solo projects in Vienna and Budapest and participated in several exhibitions in Paris and the Italian town of Fontecchio.

Now is the time to return to Dnipro and finally reflect on the evolution of Lucy’s techniques and imagery within her "home" context — now seen through the lens of artistic and life experiences from the past three years.

The first section — the so-called "Dnipro period" — features works from 2017 to 2022, primarily tied to Dnipro, a city of memories and emotions that provided the initial impulse for many of the artist’s associations. However, this connection is neither literal nor meant to be read explicitly. This part of the exhibition offers a vivid insight into her method, which can be described as working with reality — its material signs and boundaries — while searching for a balance between narrative and the autonomous life of painting as a medium. Lucy delineates the boundaries of her everyday reality through depictions of simple objects, glimpsed urban scenes, and private moments in the interiors of her apartment or studio. Yet, these mundane details dissolve into canvases that increasingly lose their figurative qualities without fully severing ties with them.

The second section presents works created during the first year of the full-scale invasion —it started when Lucy was with her family in Dnipro. Here, we see chamber tempera paintings that, through various means, interpret the experience of living under war. Some depict frozen landscapes and bewildered city dwellers, painted from life directly in Dnipro. Others capture everyday situations and objects recorded during the early months outside Ukraine, when the artist inevitably perceived (saw, heard, felt) even the most banal things through this newly acquired experience. The theme of a new gaze — both literal and metaphorical — lies at the core of key works from this period, notably the series "Warm Optics." The title is a mistranslation of thermal imaging technology, referencing a new kind and intensity of feeling with which one looks at their homeland (and, ultimately, many other things in life) under the threat of loss. These scenes are based on photographs taken by a soldier using a thermal scope — a device designed for targeting and destruction, which in his hands became a tool for observing living beings.

The intertwining of artistic practice and the experience of motherhood has shaped a new language and imagery in the exhibition’s final section. Motherhood became a profound and powerful experience that naturally took over daily studio work — not canceling it but rather amplifying it. In addition to observational sketches of family rituals, her son’s development, and her own body, Lucy depicts an imagined world as an infant might see it. She challenges the boundaries between the serious and the playful in art, rejects the notion that "childhood" or "motherhood" themes must be simplified, and is unafraid to reveal the tension and even fear associated with raising a child in an unstable world at war.

Three years ago, in the introductory text for the un-opened and ultimately entirely different exhibition, we wrote: "It’s easy to immediately get lost in the texture of pigment and succumb to the playful allure of glitter, which Ivanova does not hesitate to incorporate into her toolkit. But the figurative elements and evocative titles hint that this is not just painting about painting — it is also a collection of micro-stories. By the artist’s will, they form a larger narrative in this exhibition, which is no coincidence — it opens in Dnipro, Ivanova’s hometown, where she presents her practice for the first time in the format of a major solo show." Strangely, these words still resonate today. The glitter and colors in Ivanova’s works have not faded. But the stories — and with them, we ourselves and our perception — are entirely different. This exhibition is an invitation to once again reflect together on the new optics through which we now create and view the world and art.

Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko

WHEN: March 21 — June 14, 2025
WHERE: Artsvit gallery, Dnipro, Krutohirnyi Uzviz (Descent), 21A. Entrance through sliding doors from Uspenska Square

FREE ENTRANCE

Curator: Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko
Desing: 3Z Studio

Luсy Ivanova was born in 1989 in Dnipro. She studied at the Dnipropetrovsk Theater and Art College in the studio of Hryhorii Cherneta. Later, she graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv, where she worked in the studio of Vasyl Hurin. Her qualification was Easel Painting. She is a participant of the Montage artists’ collective, the Young Ukrainian Artists Festival (Mystetskyi Arsenal, 2017, as part of the collective), and the Young Art Biennale (Kharkiv, 2019). She is a regular participant in the international land art symposium in Mohrytsia. From 2019 to 2020, together with Yehor Antsyhin, she co-curated the visual direction of the Artsvit Gallery Residency program. In 2022, Lucy participated in the Artist-in-Residence programme at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts; in 2022–2023, she participated in the Fontecchio Residency Programme by MAXXI L’Aquila. She had solo shows at Kahan Art Space in Vienna (2023) and Budapest (2024). Lucy’s works were presented at Liste Art Fair (2022) and Vienna Contemporary (2023, 2024). In 2024 she became a part of the Secondary Archive Project. Before the full-scale russian invasion, she was based in Kyiv. Currently lives and works in Vienna.