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OLHA BARVYNKA - FRAGMENTS

  • Writer: sixteen online
    sixteen online
  • Jun 10
  • 3 min read
Exhibition poster for Olha Barvynka's paintings in Cheltenham, 25-30 July. Red and blue textured background with event details.


SIXTEEN GALLERY |24 -- 30 JULY

PRIVATE VIEW |FRIDAY 25 JULY, 6PM

OPEN HOURS | 10 AM - 5PM DAILY




FRAGMENTS IS A SOLO EXHIBITION BY UKRAINIAN ABSTRACT ARTIST OLHA BARVYNKA. CURRENTLY BASED IN THE UK, BARVYNKA BRINGS A DEEPLY PERSONAL AND POLITICALLY RESONANT PERSPECTIVE TO MATERIAL-BASED ABSTRACTION, INFORMED BY HER LIVED EXPERIENCE OF DISPLACEMENT AND HISTORICAL UPHEAVAL.









In this compelling body of work, Barvynka explores the dynamic interplay between visual form, modularity, and the cyclical processes of creation and collapse. Through a series of abstract paintings and sculptures, FRAGMENTS investigates what happens when incompatible elements are forced into coexistence—and how, through fragmentation, new forms can emerge.

Barvynka works with found materials such as fragmented cardboard, metal, concrete, glass, and textile, constructing compositions that balance tension and transformation. Her sculptural and painted works are modular in structure: each piece functions independently, yet also contributes to larger composite arrangements. This approach allows for multiple configurations, echoing the cyclical, unresolved nature of historical and personal trauma.

Architectural motifs recur throughout the exhibition—walls, beams, and stair-like forms—suggesting both human ingenuity and the scars of destruction. Colour plays a central role: layered transparently in her paintings, it evokes emotional and spatial depth, embodying the raw psychological terrain of collapse and recovery.

Fragmentation acts as both material method and conceptual language. Blurred lines, broken edges, and unstable geometries speak to disintegration—but also to the potential for renewal. Barvynka’s work challenges us to consider the hidden costs of reconstruction:

What does it take to create something truly new?

Where does the process begin, and what must be left behind?

How do these cycles unfold across global systems—and within our everyday lives?

FRAGMENTS is both a meditation and a provocation. Through her refined visual language, Barvynka invites us to reflect on the relationship between personal memory, collective trauma, and the elusive hope of utopia







ABOUT THE ARTIST


Olha Barvynka is a Ukrainian abstract artist based in Cheltenham, UK, and a current student of Contemporary Art at the University of Gloucestershire. With a background in photography and digital media, her practice now centres on painting, drawing, and sculpture using materials such as concrete, textile, metal, and found fragments. Her work explores cycles of collapse and reconstruction through a materially driven process that reflects on historical trauma, embodied memory, and systems in flux. Barvynka draws influence from Constructivism, Ukrainian modernism, and artists such as Peter Buggenhout and Charles Hewling. She is also active in curatorial work supporting Ukrainian artists in the UK, particularly through her involvement with festivals in Gloucester. Her recent project FRAGMENTS marks a turning point in her practice, expanding her exploration of spatial form, colour, and collective experience.




OLHA BARVYNKA'S PERSONAL STATEMENT


As a multidisciplinary artist, my practice explores cycles of creation and ruination through drawing, sculpture, painting, and photography. I’m drawn to ruins—not only as remnants of collapse but as spaces charged with memory, tension, and the ghostly presence of what once was. In these broken forms, I encounter a haunting beauty that holds both collective trauma and the possibility of utopia.

Fragmentation is at the heart of my process. I cut, break, and reassemble materials—metal, concrete, textile, glass—into forms that resist resolution. Destruction becomes a kind of drawing: a mark of both violence and intention. I do not aim to restore what is lost, but to let new visual languages emerge from dissonance and disrepair. These gestures mirror how I experience memory: unstable, fractured, and always in motion.

The addition of photography allows me to further explore this instability—capturing not fixed images, but glimpses of unstable structures and emotional residue. I am especially interested in how colour operates spatially in both painting and photographic composition. Colour, for me, is not decorative; it becomes an emotional architecture—hot, fleshy tones pressing against cold structures, suggesting a fragile vitality inside ruin. In drawing and sculpture, too, colour functions as a spatial experience—mapping psychic terrain, political stain, and corporeal presence.














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