On the light side of the moon

It’s only us who decide what Universe to live in, the dark or the light one.

Parents’ House

Spring in the yard of the house Garik Goryany.

Garik Goryany was born and spent his childhood in the town of Belaya Tserkov, in an old house with a mezzanine, which has been surrounded by trees for more than a century. The history of this house and its inhabitants reflected like the prism the history of the country, its prosperous and sorrowful pages.

My ancestors used to live in this house long before the revolution. They were constantly busy, they knew how to earn money, developed and had fun for the money they earned (I mean traveling, including abroad, buying books, buying beautiful furniture). Of course, my father and mother, living here under the Soviet regime, no longer traveled to either Venice or Paris...

His grandfather, the hussar of the imperial regiment and the St. George Knight, was a junior officer after the Smolensk military school graduation during the revolution.

In 1918, many grandfather’s brotherhoods made their way to the sea in order to immigrate abroad by ship. Since the road to Odessa ran through Belaya Tserkov, they stopped by my grandfather and asked him to go with them. But he refused; he believed that the Bolsheviks didn’t stay for long.

Grandfather Garik on the maternal line Grigori Rodionovich Bespechnyy.

My grandfather had five children. Garik remembers his uncles and their families well. On holidays, everyone gathered around the big table, had dinner and long talks on a variety of topics. For Igor, these people forever remained an example of genuine aristocracy and great fortitude; having survived a lot of trials, they remained cheerful, optimistic and rejoiced at the success of the younger generation.

I was lucky to be born in a family with such strong, I would even say, patriarchal foundations. The young people got married, and new people joined the family. There were, of course, wars, evacuations, other sad events, but everyone who left eventually returned to this house.

Today, the old generation is gone. The place of old things was taken by new and young trees had replaced the old ones but Garik believes that this is the same house with the same atmosphere reigning and the same sensations arising like half a century ago. The spirit of the ancestors still does not leave him.

For me, the concept of homeland lies within the perimeter of this piece of land. I had been living in different parts of the world - in Europe, in America – had been living for a long time, for years, but I knew for sure that I would definitely come back. I would come to lick my wounds; I would bring my trophies, memories and impressions there. After all, by and large, the whole world is an abstraction, a spatial illusion. There are only those whom we know and who are close to us.

Garik Goryany: "I know for sure that I will definitely come back." 

Where the Childhood Goes to

In his memoirs, Garik keeps that magical feeling of happiness, which is created by seemingly very simple things.

There were a lot of various things in the house - new, old ones, completely out of use – some figurines, little statues, dolls, books - it all worked, rustled, something was thought out of it all...

Imagine, at least, The Great Russian Encyclopedia in 55 volumes! Having wrapped in a sheepskin coat, Garik and his sister read these books out loud accompanied with the crackle of firewood in an old fireplace.

We had a huge library, and we leafed through these books, redrawn the pictures, invented some games, arranged home theaters, organized readings. These activities were stimulated by adults; they showed us the direction, encouraged, gave us some ideas. 

Room on the second floor.

There were many impressions outside the walls of the house, when nature took the first boy’s steps – the grass, leaves, sky, river... There is still a boat in the yard, on which Garik sailed being a child.

At that time, one of my most interesting activities was looking at the river bottom and solving its many secrets with the help of my own irrepressible fantasy.

Much later, these patterns and labyrinths peeped in childhood at the bottom of the riverbed will give the artist Garik Goryany some prompts for the plots of his paintings.

By the Heart’s Calling

By and large, everything we have inside comes from childhood. We are filled with words said by someone, maybe even by chance, and these words take root in us. After many years, they suddenly find a response - they give a mental impulse, a new impetus to rethink our own sensations. The phrases we heard in early childhood (seemingly long forgotten and scattered) in adult life become the buttons that we press to solve the intricacies of the world.

Garik Goryany’s mom was the most loyal and very wise friend for him. Thanks to her efforts, such a cozy, warm, intimate atmosphere prevailed in the house. But the main thing is that she had an inescapable passion for learning new places, learning the world.

My parents didn’t like to stay on the spot and always encouraged me to move. Quite often, we went to Kiev, where we visited exhibitions, museums, watched new theatrical performances or went on an excursion to some other, yet unexplored city.

His father was fond of music, poetry, beautifully painted with watercolor. He gave his son the first lessons in image-making; he taught to dissolve the paints, to paint with a brush, ink, and fountain pen. However, he took his passion only as an innocent hobby since in the family of doctors they believed there are many more important things in life than drawing. His parents were convinced: having matured, the child should get a real profession, and not to be engaged in art for all his life.

They weren’t going to change their opinion, so I went to explore Moscow incognito.

Things That Aren’t Taught at School

Even before his trip to Moscow, young Garik Goryany was greatly influenced by his acquaintance with the artist of the 1960s Viktor Khomkov, who in many respects determined the inner structure of the young man. Garik became seriously interested in the phenomenon of shamanism and as new knowledge was obtained, the classical painting was increasingly replaced by religious and philosophical research and sign-symbolic techniques on the canvases of the beginning artist.
 

Victor Khomkov. "Kamlanie".

Thanks to the training received from the “non-exhibited” Khomkov, at the age of 18, Garik Goryany entered the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute at the first attempt. When his parents knew about it they experienced ambivalent feelings: on the one hand, they were delighted, and on the other, they felt that it was not serious anyway. Perhaps their mood was transferred to the son, because Garik did not study in Moscow even two courses.

In my youth, the desire for creation is as strong as for destruction.

But in fact, the reason was more weighty than youthful rebellion and inconstancy: after the second year of the institute, Goryany was called up for military service.

The recruit was sent to the military unit serving the General Headquarters of the Ministry of Defense on Rublevka. As it turned out, the Soviet Army greatly appreciated the drawing, writing, and actively working in art youth.

There were about twenty of us — green, funny artists with huge ambitions. Since the technical means of transmitting images were not as developed as they are today, our task was to redraw landscapes and some technical objects taken from satellites.

Perhaps thanks to it, thanks to the specialty of the army artist, Garik Goryany has this abstract, as if watching from above at the Earth, look?


 Gari Goryany Postmodernism. 

10 years long Maturity Test

After demobilization, Garik did not return to art school. Once he calculated: during his student time he passed no less than one and a half hundreds of entrance and session exams, because after the Surikov Institute there were several other educational institutions, in which alternate studies became one continuous and only important, but very stretched in time test for Goryany. It was the test on the suitability of being an artist who not only draws, but also thinks.

In particular, the young man went to Prague, where he studied figurative art at the school of modern art under the Hungarian artist Mircea Zlamala’s direction. And here, in Prague, the author’s exhibition of Garik Goryany took place in the art gallery RAPID.

But before going to the Czech Republic, Goryany became interested in medicine.

Mum never stopped hoping that I would finally become serious, and to please her, I entered the Pirogov Vinnitsa State Medical Institute.

However, it was necessary not so much for his mother, as for himself.

Anatomy, physiology, histology these are the things, having studied which, you can learn what a biological human body is and how masterfully it is made.

And nevertheless, after the third course Goryany left the medical institute without the diploma of the doctor. Instead, he entered the Faculty of Philosophy of the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University. However, Garik soon became disillusioned with the unified university program which did not give him the knowledge he really needed. After studying a couple of years, Goryany decided to change it for the faculty of journalism, which he successfully graduated from.

But all these years, only painting was the thing he was really interested in. In Ukraine, the first personal exhibition of paintings by Garik Goryany opened in Vinnitsa on January 8, 1985, that is, during his studies at the medical institute. A few years later, the exhibitions went one after another - in 1989, Goryany’s works were displayed at the Republican Center for Spiritual Culture, in 1990 - at the Taras Shevchenko Kiev National University, in 1993 - at the Victoria National Gallery, in 1994 - at the National Opera of Ukraine, in 1995 - at the Blue Angel Club (Andorra), 1996 - at the Cultural Center of Ukraine in Belgium, in 1997 - at the Ukrainian House, 1999 - at the Taras Shevchenko National Museum .

In the artist's studio. London. 2003.

Meanwhile, having moved to the capital and working in the Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater, Goryany met with many extraordinary people from the world of art: actors, directors, artists. Some of them became his friends. But the meeting with the eminent nuclear physicist Yuri Maximovich Shvaydak, who at that time was already passionate about spacesophy, was truly a fateful one for the young man. Goryany takes his doctrine and becomes one of the founders of the International Academy of Space Science in Kiev.

We organized classes, held public lectures and shows. In the domed hall of the old planetarium our evenings were held. Everything was there — the crystal skulls, primitive religions, Buddhism, the White Brotherhood, dowsing contactors, and speleologists, archaeologists, anarchist Christians and professional scientists from various institutes and academies of sciences. We studied the latest technology and practiced the ancient techniques of meditation, turned to centuries-old traditions and put modern experiments. All this developed and changed us on a conscious, but more - on a subconscious level.

Garik Goryany and Yuri Maksimovich Shvaydak. In the artist's studio on Andreevsky descent. Kiev. 1999.

Who is the Man? Where are we from and where are we going? Where does our Self go after the death of the body? What is our purpose in the universe? Of course, the participation of a young man in solving such complex ideological problems had a huge impact on him, not only as a researcher, but also as an artist.

In the late 1990s, Garik Goryany created a series of paintings “The Worlds Visible and Invisible”, with which he traveled to Sweden at the invitation of the Russian-Swedish friendship society.

“Albatross” is not a Bird

In Sweden, Goryaniy met Robert Jakobsen, the founder of the Swedish social theater Albatross. The vivid, emotional performances of the original Scandinavian director affect painful fractures in the modern history of human society, and the theme of the Holocaust is above all. The theater itself is wandering: a small troupe travels around Europe and performs its plays in the squares of small Danish, Polish, German, French cities. Garik Goryany traveled together with the theater, with its decorations, costumes, endless rehearsals.

Garik Goryany and Robert Jacobsen at the artist's personal exhibition in Gothenburg.

But Albatross served not only as an experimental platform for actors, but also as a base for people studying the secret knowledge. Communication with Kabbalists, participation in other esoteric groups, the study of various religious and philosophical doctrines and meditative practices were a kind of intellectual and cognitive pilgrimage of Goryany.

For three years, Goryany had presented his meditative and metaphysical works to the European public. In 2000, an exhibition of his paintings opened in the gallery Lagerval Lagerval (Gothenburg, Sweden); in 2001 - at the Albatross Theater Academy (Sweden); in 2002 - in the Palace of Culture of the Vigo city (Spain); in 2002 - in the city of Porto (Portugal); in 2003, Goryanny’s paintings were twice shown at the London Start Gallery (England).

London. 2003

Perhaps I can be called a peredvizhnik artist (an advanced democratically-minded realist artist of the second half of the 19th century, a participant in the so-called “Mobile exhibitions” – transl.), because I almost always take my works with me in all my travels.

In 2004, the American period began in the life of the artist. In New York, his exhibitions were held annually for four years. The works of Goryany were represented at the Ukrainian Institute of America, at the Kabbalah Center and in the society of Rudolf Steiner at Columbia University, at the Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, at the Inter Art Gallery, at Art Expo, Jacob K. Javits Center and other art galleries in Manhattan. In addition, he worked a lot and actively exhibited in Florida, California, Boston, and Philadelphia.

Ferry to Manhattan. 2005 year.

But it was not only the opening days that the abroad public remembered the artist. In his foreign trips, Igor Goryany met with a huge number of outstanding people, among that there were such titans of art as Ernst Neizvestniy, Mikhail Shemyakin, Robert Shaushenberg, Sai Twombly.

When you are moving, you will certainly be accompanied by people. I was lucky to meet the best of them.

Alexander Gleser in the studio Garik Goryanogo. 

As for creativity, Garik Goryany plunged into the theme of meditative-metaphysical spaces, through which he demonstrates his own relativity to the world. And at the same time the artist manages to maintain a surprisingly positive attitude to everything that happens. After all, as Goryany likes to repeat, we live on the light side of the Moon.

In the artist's studio. Ukraine. 2018.