Nikita Kravtsov, a modern Ukrainian artist with international multicultural experience, shared his current creative plans and thoughts about digital art and the fear of collecting it with the V-Art team.
What you are working on now, what are your creative plans for the near future?
Now I got across to silkscreen technology. If we take France, graphics are very popular here, while in Ukraine people mostly buy paintings. Graphics in France are much cheaper than paintings, moreover, they are smaller in format, what is very suitable for mainly small French apartments. Also, several times I was a resident of Cité Internationale des Arts, one of the largest residences in Europe, and now I also print my editions in the silk-screening studio there.
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Taken your longstanding international experience into account, do you notice any national preferences in the art world?
Yes, people have a different mentality, the French are more situational, and Ukrainian art is more political, our art often draws themes from politics and literature. French art is more emotional, one might even say erotic. I think that an artist should always balance, take something from different countries, but always remain themselves. In France, the art scene is very closed, unlike New York, where in the first week of life you already have a lot of contacts, everyone is trying to weave you into the cultural fabric. I just started basing in France, but I continue working with Ukraine, engage with Katya Taylor, they actively support me, collect artworks.
What is your attitude towards digital art? How has the digitalization trend affected you?
I am interested in all areas and manifestations of art, except perhaps for decorative items such as impressionistic landscapes and portraits of children and horses. Informational, digital art has a very good effect on art in general, but I cannot say how it affects the market, many are afraid to collect it. It does not affect the market in Ukraine yet, I hope you will change this situation with your new platform. Therefore, the whole world is becoming more and more digitized, this is no longer news, but reality, and people should stop living with an archaistic perception of artistic practices, that if a work is bought for a collection, it should be an oil painting with a large signature anyway. If you are a professional collector, then art is a bank, your investment, and in parallel, you like and admire it. Well, if you are a professional artist, then you will not limit yourself to one media, and will develop in different directions.
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Does the digital change the philosophy of art in general?
I often visit exhibitions in the Palais de Tokyo, one of the largest and most interesting experimental sites in Paris, where not only museum art, but also “young” art is presented. There is a lot of digital, artists create whole worlds, it is very interesting. For me, digital art is more mass, it is faster to see than material. It is more consistent with the new time, new mentality. I read somewhere that a modern person’s attention lingers for 5–8 seconds, when they flip through a news feed, the brain very quickly processes information and flips through it or pictures as well, without even getting fixed on the meaning and details. So they can sit for 3 hours on the phone, and then do not remember anything that they were viewing. We began to delve less, became more superficial.
The concept of “multiculturalism” was a common thread in your earlier creative work, but do you have some central themes now? Are there any changes due to the quarantine?
Well, multiculturalism is not a concept or topic, but simply a means or a way of existence. In my work, I’m now more interested in studying the changes in the movement of society, the manipulation of the masses and the world as a living environment, suitable or not suitable for life, the themes are more military, about the resources consumption. Now I often work with digitized art, create illustrations for news investigations, I have previously illustrated the criminal code, I find human vices and weaknesses interesting.
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Where is the main line between art and design for you?
Art can be design and design can be art. Due to multi-usage, this border is already blurring, as is the case with illustrations. It has become more difficult to archive everything, put it on the shelves. I think that art should feed a good artist in parallel, they should not depend only on art, on sales. When you depend too much on them, you fall for the tastes of the consumer, and do not create art, but start churning out orders. And there is no single formula.
What are your predictions on the exit of the art world from quarantine, what might change?
Now we are experiencing another crisis of art after a long era of postmodernism. There was every second musician before, now every second is an artist. Many small galleries closed, while large ones took advantage of this time to move to more spacious rooms. I think that art will become more “refined”, and something already dead, uninteresting, will disappear.
I am interested in your platform as something new, a social network that popularizes digital art. Something new in our latitudes.
Photos 2, 3, 4 by Hugo Cesto, 1, 5 from the personal archive
