"The 'great book of the universe' (as Galileo called it) is written in the language of geometry and proportions...a perfect and complete realisation of ideal mathematical cosmology. Because of him, the universe was shown more clearly then ever before to be governed by simple mathematical laws that the human mind was uniquely adapted to discover and understand. Rather than an abandonment of mathematical systems by artists, one might expect an unprecedented upsurge of enthusiasm; this was surely the final victory of empathy over abstraction." Richard Padovan, Proportion, Science, Philosophy Architecture
Ulyana Gumeniuk is an enigma to me. She looks at much of her universe through the lens of mathematical cosmology, Newtonian laws and Fibonacci's 'golden section'. She sends me quotes from philosophers and cultural historians that are far, far more thorny and difficult to absorb than the one above. More importantly perhaps, she makes colossal, breathtaking figurative paintings by putting oil on to canvas, but is about as far from being categorised as a figurative painter (at least in terms of intellectual direction and emotional drive) as you could ever imagine.
Born in the Ukraine, she studied painting, when she could, for two hours a night (her choice) after high school classes. Then, as a post-Perestroika young adult she continued her training in the St Petersburg Academy of Arts (once known as the Repin Institute and a former breeding ground of the 'Non-Conformists') before going to Central St Martin's College in London. She won the BP Travel award in 2003.
Technically proficient, at times awesomely cerebral, Ulyana has developed a certain kind of tenacity that could only have been cobbled together from spending a childhood running away from the KGB with her father, the Non-Conformist Ukrainian artist Feodosiy Humeniuk. (For the daughter, the H in Humeniuk changed to a G for reasons too complicated to go into here). The family zig-zagged across Russia, mainly between Moscow and Ukraine and, to put it mildly, they had a bit of a hard time while doing so.
Growing up during Perestroika meant that a lot of her days were "shrouded in threat" - she had a petrol bomb thrown in to her house for the 'crime' of not standing up to sing the Soviet national anthem. This, amongst other things, she says has led to her empirical approach - "I just stand back and watch ourselves go about our lives, doing what we do with the world".
Equally, having been a witness to the prosecutions, persecutions and the (presumably) consequent establishment of an avant-garde in Russia, made her "want to look for something different in art - an awareness of the importance of the structure and its relation with the ideas of abstraction in the world."
The aforementioned 'empirical' acceptance of things seems to have found its strongest voice in Ulyana's use of the Fibonacci 'division of space' that is either obviously or subliminally worked in to most of her compositions. It nearly always forms the basis, the actual physical lower layers of the painting - as it did in much of the work of Piero della Francesca, Velazquez, Rubens and even Francis Bacon, all huge painterly influences on Ulyana's life. She also cites Tony Conrad's 1966 Structuralist film 'The Flicker' as another great influence on her work.
'The New Ukrainians', 2002
The Fibonacci division of space or the 'golden section' was first written about by Euclid and is represented most perfectly in nature with logarithmic spirals whose 'turns' increase in geometric progression. Hawks and eagles, for example, approach their prey in a logarithmic spiral - their sharpest view is at an angle to their direction of flight; insects approach a light source in a logarithmic spiral; the arms of tropical cyclones are logarithmic spirals. Basically logarithmic spirals are everywhere and anywhere you want to find them. Her painting 'The New Ukrainians' - look closely - distributes its tones in a logarithmic spiral - light and dark areas go round in intertwined movements across the plane of composition. Nearly all of the other Gumeniuk paintings I have seen have fastened to their canvas some kind of friendly relationship with mathematical cosmology.
"I try to use structures I create as a base for my paintings," says Ulyana. "I create a structure but allow for small mistakes and hitches over that structure. I then paint figurative forms which spill out and over yet I retain the general dynamics of the structure."
Once this foundation is established unfamiliar, terse and contemporary oddities are introduced into what, at first glance, seem like gentle Renaissance panoramas.
"The tight, restrictive etching is given emotional intensity by doing a figurative painting in an Old Master technique", says Ulyana. "People make the mistake that my figurative compositions relate only to the Old Masters or they think they are just a 'Freudian spill out'. But the pictures are actually reflecting structures, substituting language."
'Sunday Roast', 2000
One might ask why the traditional eighteenth-century scene of 'Sunday Roast', for example, with its pink and ivory palette and its ladies in puffed-up dresses, could suddenly fill you with horror on close inspection. Oh yes, it's because the central figures' heads are in the process of turning into bloody hocks of ham. Then there's 'Wedding Stitch-Up'. A lithe and beautiful girl prepares herself for her most 'important' day, but she's surrounded by soggy newspaper, the kind of 'warning' tape that would be used to cordon off a dangerous spill on a motorway, meat (again), a skirt whose hem, even, is made of meat, medicinal bottles and needles. All the things that surround us in the prime of our life.
'Wedding Stitch-Up', 2002
Joking apart, this is neither shock or schlock art; this is Ulyana making a comment - about the neuroses of the family, conservative rituals, 'corrupt' regimes, the stomach-churning pollutions of modern life. But she won't say; she won't make direct comment; and we don't blame her. What we do know is that she is using "abstract signifiers", and that they are her attempts to "sneak in the unpresentable" without anyone noticing. Jean-Francois Lyotard would have been proud. We know that Paul Noble is proud too; he's a big fan of the work; so are fellow painters Keith Coventry and Paula Rego.
'Malice in Wonderland'
Other smaller paintings, dark and lovely, are "Malice in Wonderland" and "Is There Love?" where Ulyana paints more spontaneously and immediately, it seems. There are far fewer obvious layers; there is, for example, a gun to a girl's head, a few rabbits, more 'straightforward' compositions. Questions like 'What is love?' pop up.
But those shadows still remain, as does the undercutting of perspective, the inherent structures and that seemingly Russian gravity. Ulyana Gumeniuk is meshing together the old and the new. She's in control of her medium.
As with Velazquez (whose paintings Ulyana's remind me of in many ways), there is not a display or a need to reach any kind of essence here; there is just a great draughtsperson, a great painter at work, showing life in all its glassy-eyed, distracted but genuine abandon.
Laura K Jones
Ulyana Gumeniuk
ASC Studios, Bond House
20-33 Goodwood Road
London SE14 6BL
T: +44 (0)7956 114 090
www.ulyanagumeniuk.com
ARTISTS OF FAME AND PROMISE
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Laura K Jones is a London-based journalist and a regular news correspondent for Saatchi Online's daily magazine.
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