Collect Art Magazine
Interview with Igor Grechanyk
Your works often explore themes rooted in esoteric doctrines and ancient mythology. How do these influences shape your creative process, and how do you choose which symbols to incorporate into your sculptures?
It is essential to tune into a certain wave of energy before creating a sculpture. This wave of energy comes and inspires me to develop a new concept (work). It allows me to embody not only my ideas but also deeper, universal energies. Our world is filled with meanings, contents, and symbols, and they constantly knock on the doors of human consciousness. Rather, symbols choose the work of art through which they manifest and come into the artist’s field of vision.
You describe your approach as an “open form,” allowing for multiple layers of interpretation. How do you invite viewers to actively participate in creating new meanings from your works?
In my creative works, I incorporate several layers of perception. They function like stairs, inviting the viewer to engage with the art. The first level is visual and more formal. The second level emerges when spiritual meanings appear behind the formal aspects. This level is more detached and encourages a rethinking of the visual image. The third level opens up a space for stimulating the viewer’s imagination.
A whole labyrinth of meanings is created, and the emotional charge of the artwork acts like the thread of Ariadne, guiding the viewers into a space where they are alone with themselves. This offers them an opportunity for a new perspective on themselves and the world through my art.
Your transparent sculptures combine solid fragments with light and air, challenging conventional ideas of mass and form. Can you explain the role of emptiness in your work, and how it contributes to the viewer’s perception?
Lines outline the boundaries of voids, which are not actually empty spaces, but volumes of energy. These voids also serve as spatial traps for external energies. When viewers approach my works, I hope they can feel a certain energy emanating from these “gaps.” It is not merely an absence of material; rather, it is an opportunity for the viewer to fill these gaps with their own experiences and thoughts.
The gaps and caesuras in your solid sculptures seem to serve as points of interaction between the artwork and the viewer. What role do you see these openings playing in shaping the emotional or intellectual experience of your pieces?
I perceive these gaps and caesuras in my sculptures as fissures between worlds, as pauses. These voids resemble the gaps in our own world, through which another world of spirit gazes upon us. They can also serve as a metaphor for our own perception of reality: we often try to find meaning in what seems empty or undefined.
You mention that your mission as an artist is to liberate spiritual energy and reveal the potential of the viewer. How do you approach translating this mission into tangible form through your sculptures?
Art not only reflects reality; it also creates a space for interaction with other dimensions or states of being. I believe that each sculpture is not just an object of art, but an energetic portal created by the artist between our world and other unknown worlds.
Through contemplation and focused attention on the artwork, the viewers enter into a non-verbal, direct contact with it. This connection allows the viewers to feel the energy of a distant universe. My role in this process is to infuse the work with energy and meaning, to make it compositionally interesting and emotionally charged. It should capture attention and engage the viewers in an energetic wave that brings them into a space for self-expression, reflection, and emotional enrichment.
An artist must have a well-developed inner world for their messages to hold significance.
Your artist statement suggests that art is a path of infinity and that the artist is an instrument of the Universe. How does this philosophy influence your exploration of themes like energy, self-awareness, and the cosmos in your work?
This concept encourages me to explore the connections between energy, self-awareness, and the universe. I believe that each work is part of a greater whole. My task is to reveal these connections and to travel through them as a wanderer on the paths of the universe. An artist is an element of the universe, generated by the universe for its own self-discovery.
Your use of light and transparency creates dynamic interactions between the artwork and its surrounding space. How do you approach the relationship between your sculptures and the environments in which they are displayed?
When elements of transparency or special lighting are created in a sculpture, this already implies an interaction with space. They are prepared for this interaction during the creation process. The space in which they are exhibited can vary. It may be more active, aggressive, or more restrained, open to active interaction or to focused contemplation and reflection.
In each of these different spaces, my sculpture reveals itself in various ways. It is like a melody that can be performed in different styles—classical, rock, or jazz. This is already an arrangement of the idea, the main concept that each work carries.
The space is seen through the artwork, while the artwork overlays the surrounding space. This collaboration creates a new piece. This piece penetrates the surrounding space, spreading within it and encompassing it. At the same time, the space enters the sculpture, beginning to live a new life and gaining new opportunities for self-expression within it.
Your art often blends realistic elements with contemporary concepts, creating new visual impressions. How do you achieve a balance between these opposing forces in your sculptures?
These combinations should be unexpected in order to break traditional patterns of perception. They highlight the limitations and artificiality of conventional classifications in life and art, which are created by humans to simplify the understanding of the surrounding world. These simplifications often overlook the most significant aspects of our existence.
Through unexpected approaches and combinations, I focus on new meanings that may have roots in the past or present, but are directed towards the future. This encourages the viewer to engage in deeper analysis and personal discoveries.
The balance between the realistic and the contemporary in my work is not just a formal aspect, but rather a philosophical one. My references to the history of art, as well as elements and traditions of realism, allow the viewer to experience familiar emotions. At the same time, elements that go beyond realism offer new meanings and encourage the viewer to engage in deeper analysis. These elements autonomously find their own place in the sculptures during the creative process.
As a laureate of several prestigious awards and the creator of monumental public works, how do you see your large-scale pieces contributing to public spaces and the broader cultural conversation?
I believe that large works of art can become important cultural symbols that unite communities. The sculptural representations of prominent figures, which I infuse with metaphors and allegorical approaches, not only honor these individuals but also serve as significant symbols that shape collective memory and national identity. They become places for gathering, discussion, and reflection.
In general, large artworks compel people to pause in public spaces. They gather and focus viewers’ attention, which is often scattered in all directions, on the questions and messages conveyed by the artworks. These pieces encourage us to reflect on the meanings of our existence within our environment.
You describe the viewer as a co-creator of the future through their interaction with your art. How do you envision your work evolving to continue engaging viewers in this collaborative process of meaning-making?
I see my art and art in general as an evolving process. For me, the main focus is on content and emotion. When a viewer is emotionally captivated by a work of art, and when that work conveys its meaningful message, the artistic image becomes a conversation partner for them for a long time.
Moreover, I want to use modern technologies so that viewers can interact with my works in new ways. Currently, I am creating video animations and series of digital paintings based on my sculptural images. These works unfold the image over time and add new layers of meaning.
https://ru.scribd.com/document/782831782/Sculpture-More
Igor Grechanyk has gained recognition for his unique ability to give form to the undefined and embody the collective unconscious in his works. His art is deeply rooted in esoteric doctrines and ancient mythology, allowing him to unveil the inner, mystical elements of his sculptures. His works carry pronounced symbolism.
In his creative practice, Grechanyk employs the concept of “open form,” which offers multiplicity and layers of interpretation. The artworks themselves typically contain multiple levels of meaning, stimulating the viewer to actively participate in the creation of new significances.
Grechanyk demonstrates a supreme level of artistic mastery, experimenting with form and space in his works, creating new visual impressions that blend realistic elements with contemporary concepts, resulting in unique images.
In Grechanyk’s solid sculptures, form is conveyed as a single concentrated sensation of the artist, sometimes exhibiting a certain monumentality. Even these solid sculptures often have one side left open, gaps, caesuras, and breaks in form, demonstrating a tendency toward dialogue with space and the viewer. These gaps and caesuras become places where the viewer can project their thoughts and emotions, transforming a static object into a dynamic process of interaction.
Grechanyk’s transparent sculptures and their combinations with solid meaningful fragments—framework forms filled with air and light—challenge conventional notions of massiveness, opening new perspectives of perception. The emptiness within these forms is not merely an absence of material; it is filled with a complex network of markers that lead to new meanings. Interaction with light and space allows them to seemingly disintegrate into multifaceted elements.
This process resembles the unfolding of a complex palette of sensations and meanings, which, like atoms, form a multilayered structure of the work. Thus, the transparent sculptures invite the viewer to delve into the depths of their energetic essence, where each element interacts with the surrounding world, creating new meanings and impressions.
Igor Grechanyk graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. He has held numerous exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad, including solo projects in museums and galleries, and has participated in art fairs and festivals worldwide. His works are widely held in private and museum collections in Ukraine and around the world. He is a laureate of prestigious Ukrainian and international awards and the creator of a number of monumental public works.
https://ru.scribd.com/document/782831782/Sculpture-More
Art is a path of infinity through our world of humans. An artist walking this path acts as an instrument of the Universe in its self-awareness. The mission of the artist is to liberate the spiritual energy of a person from the constraints of established perception. The released energy freely flows through the Universe, exploring it. As a result of engaging with art, the potential of a person is revealed, and the viewer has the opportunity to touch the very source of creativity, enriched by a new spiritual experience of the world of art.
Through my art, I create a perspective of energy to structure the surrounding harsh chaos and build a humanitarian space directed towards the future. In this process, I strive to capture the invisible inner essence of phenomena and sensations, overlaying them with a visible texture like a net. By interacting with the manifested image through their attention and interpreting it, viewers become co-creators of the future.
