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The Cardinal Gallery
solo exhibition
The Cardinal Gallery is proud to have the works of photographer Olga Volianska grace our walls. As a small boutique gallery that specializes in limited edition fine art photography we are always on the look out for new artists whose works speak to us. Volianska’s photography did just that. Initially it was the texture of Volianska’s Observation: The Surface and Erosion Series that caught our eye as we were struck by the juxtaposition in the photographs and how they seemed to commentate on the delicate relationship between man and nature. As we delved further into her body of work we discovered her Water’s Flowers and Frozen Gardens Series. The beautiful photographs of flowers submerged and frozen in water appear at first glance to be arresting paintings. Upon a closer look one can see the intricate details of the photography captured by Volianka’s artistically perceptive eye. Volianka’s award winning work brings thought provoking delight to the viewer.
The Volianska exhibition has garnered a tremendously positive response by the many, many patrons that have visited the gallery to take in the work.
These are just a few of our patron’s testimonials about the exhibition:
“Stunning work”
“Tremendous detail”
“Masterful eye”
“As if they are ethereal paintings”
“I felt an immediate sense of happiness and calm”
“This show is not to be missed as it inspires a sense of joy and timeless beauty”
Chelsea Hulme-Wilyman and Cory Wilyman
Co-Founders and Owners of The Cardinal Gallery
Exhibition preparation
Budapest “House of Lucie”
“Espace Beaurepaire,” Paris
Interviews
Delicate compositions of flowers frozen in water, evocative of the ephemeral and the ethereal, are captured in Olga Volianska’s enchanting images.
The Ukrainian photographer made the aptly titled ‘Frozen Gardens’ series during the Covid-19 lockdown this spring in her home in the coastal city of Odessa, Ukraine. The wilting flowers sometimes appearing blurry and indistinct, with air bubbles visible just beneath the surface, the series is suggestive of a desire to preserve something through photography and suspend time.
“You conceive something but flowers are active in the water and the freezing intervenes [with the composition],” Volianska, 45, says. “The position of the frozen flowers was always a surprise and gave me the feeling of holding a moment.”
Volianska’s husband had purchased the flowers from pensioners living nearby who had grown them in their gardens. Experimenting and improvising, Volianska aesthetically arranged them in the water, paying careful attention to color combinations, froze them and subsequently photographed them.
Completely unpredictable, the creative process was full of surprises. “I had to invent a whole kind of freezing technology as it was important that everything didn’t turn into a block of ice,” she explains. “An epiphany happened when I got the result and watching the remaining air bubbles was very exciting.”
An interior designer by trade, Volianska has the eye of a colorist and cites the Impressionists such as Auguste Renoir and Vincent Van Gogh as well as other artists including Vassily Kandinsky, Charles Conder and Cy Twombly among those who have influenced her.
Conceding that ‘Frozen Gardens’ is suggestive of the fragility of life and seems analogical to the Covid-19 pandemic, she says: “I think intuitively the general situation in the world influenced the series. When it became impossible to travel, I stopped wandering around in search of inspiration and focused on what was surrounding me and found in it even more beauty and sophistication.”
By Anna Sansom
group exhibition 30.11.2020 – 11.12.2020
Gallery NuArt, 28/2, Grushevskogo str., Kyiv, Ukraine – Photo exhibition “New Generation”
