For Stanislav Turina, drawing plays an essential role. It is an almost automatic form of writing in which the artist reflects on political, social, and artisticprocesses in the country. Drawing enables him to ask important existentialquestions and to find answers within them. In his work, Waldemar Tatarczuk recreates Turina’s drawings by enlarging them, yet keeping them small and seemingly insignificant. Tatarczuk comments: The idea to create these sculptures was inspired by Stas’s story. Many years ago, he began making small objects intended as models for his drawings, although he never actually used them that way. I decided to reverse this process and reproduce his drawings from the ‘Endless Still Life’ series as sculptures, even though I am not a sculptor.
This gesture draws attention to what usually remains unnoticed and highlights the significance of the artist’s work as an intellectual routine that becomes increasingly complicated during the war.
The installation Sticks, Rods, Poles was first presented as an artwork in 2024 within Turina’s solo exhibition A Few Kilograms of Exhibitions, with a changing display. These sticks, branches, a whip, pointers, a fishing rod, an umbrella, a broken mop, and other objects were collected in various ways over a longperiod. Each carries its own story and at the same time signifies nothing. Yet in the gallery space, they are not accidental: they speak of the non-randomness of life and reference the practices of Artem Badulaiev, Denys Pankratov, Daria Kuzmych, Yurii Kruchak, Yulia Kostereva, Katia Libkind, and Tiberii Silvashi, while casually glancing inward at the legacy of Collective Actions. An artist who works with life as a living material invites the viewer to reflecton what simple objects are, what meaning ‘unnecessary’ or ‘excess’ things sometimes carry, what ‘excess’ even is, and what makes old wooden slingshots the most precious among all valuable things.
Stanislav Turina was born in 1988 in Makiivka, Donetsk region, and grew up in Mukachevo, Zakarpattia region. He received his artistic education at the Department of Glass at the Lviv National Academy of Arts (2005–2011). In his practice, he uses various media: graffiti, ceramics, drawing, installation, performance, and other media. In 2010, together with other artists, he co-founded the Black Circle Festival. He was also a co-founder of two self-organised galleries: Detenpyla and Yefremova26. In 2012, together with Yuriy Bilei, Anton Varga, Pavlo Kovach Jr., Oleh Perkovskyi, and Yevhen Samborskyi, he co-founded the Open Group (Відкрита група) collective. In 2018, together with artist Kateryna Libkind, he founded “Atelienormalno,” a studio for artists with Down syndrome and without it.