The Great Landscape

Since 2014, the Ukrainian painter Volodymyr Budnikov and his wife, the painter Vlada Ralko, have been addressing the issue of Russia’s war against Ukraine in their work. Following the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the couple left Kyiv. They are now grappling with the war from abroad, making use of artist residencies – and raising questions about the role and significance of artists and the visual arts in the face of armed conflict. Budnikov’s “Great Landscape” was created during his residency at the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok.

Over the decades, Budnikov has consistently developed his own language of abstract painting. Landscapes have been a key motif in his artistic explorations. Ralko spoke of them as works closely aligned with the tradition of Japanese literature, in which the landscape is not described in and of itself; a description of the landscape is a description of the protagonist’s inner state. Budnikov once declared that there is no place in art for topicality or a swift reaction to current events. Instead, he saw art as a field that enables profound reflection, allowing consecutive versions of a work to be recorded and the process of its creation to be captured.

The Great Landscape is a work of an entirely different nature. It is an intense record of a reaction to the horror of war, the experience of forced nomadism, and the individual person’s defencelessness in the face of aggression. Budnikov’s earlier language of painterly expression proved insufficient here. His lexicon of motifs began to include skeletons, human figures rendered in outline, vertebrae and skulls. The scarred landscape finds a parallel in the deformed and fragmented human body. The trembling outline contrasts with the sweeping brushstrokes that merge into swirling patches of black, from beneath which a dirty red colour shines through like blood. This is a tale of bestial violence that destroys both people and the land.

“The Great Landscape” is an expression of protest against war, but also against the way it is being manipulated in the geopolitical sphere. The painting is a part of the “Questioning the Visible” cycle, which focuses on challenging what is outwardly apparent. In their commentary on the works created in Białystok, Budnikov and Ralko pointed out that ‘what is visible conforms to a pre-established pattern’. The influence of politics and economics on the perception of phenomena and events manifests itself in the ignoring of inconvenient details, or in interpreting them instrumentally. The war-torn Ukraine has been held hostage to Europe’s energy security since the outset of the conflict.

Izabela Kopania
Translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz

Co-financed from the means of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland coming from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture – a state special-purpose fund
Carried out from the City of Białystok budget