Mykola Matsenko «Heraldics»
Mykola Matsenko’s large-scale "heraldic" series, which started in 2007 and continues to this day, currently may be called his art "business card". The artist's works are rich in symbols, metaphors, cultural and historical allusions. His recognizable painting style, with its graphic expressiveness and a wide range of meanings, has earned the "master of modern heraldry" title for the artist.
Combined in paintings are the attributes of art and everyday objects, the history and the present, the agricultural and the urban way of life, which are the symbols of the current national reality. In characteristic ironic fashion Mykola Matsenko has assembled in his compositions the stereotype symbols firmly entrenched in our minds.
His "heraldry" is a kind of a concentrate of personal and collective vision of modern Ukrainian spiritual and material culture. In the works of the series one can feel the fullness of life in all its beauty, sometimes funny, sometimes majestic and sometimes terrible. It is a mirror that with a cold accuracy ascertains all the contradictions of our everyday life, reflects paradoxes of existence, but at the same time, demonstrates its variety and diversity. The balanced symmetrical composition is used by the artist as a symbol of opposition to chaos, as the embodiment of the dualism of life and different ways of studying it.
Apparently, this is why Matsenko’s "heraldry" is so attractive — with combination of sincere, cheerful cordiality, humor and critical, detached rational view of things, that dots the i’s. In the works of the artist many stereotypical concepts, statements, visual images both relevant and, at the first glance, obsolete, acquire (figuratively and literally) colors of the new content, become a part of the present.
A rich symbolic range allows different perusal depending on the viewer's perception and encourages to rethink many of the established meanings of our reality, offers the foundation for the new history and for the design of a decent future.
Natalia Matsenko
