Sergei Sviatchenko

SVIATCHENKO (b. 1952) is one of todays most influential collage artists. His oeuvre cuts through the boundaries of traditional and contemporary visuals, merging pop culture with politics, history, science and architecture. Growing up in the Ukraine in 1960s, SVIATCHENKO witnessed first-hand the revolutionary shifts in global society and contemporary culture. From Khrushchev’s tomb to Gorbachev’s new openness and the fall of the Wall, and the revolutionary extension of the West, bringing with it a new flourish of pop culture and artistic expression. In SVIATCHENKO’s work we see the reflections of decades of artistic exploration. From the World War I, Dadaism, Surrealism, Soviet Avant-Garde, Constructivism and the 1960s American Expressionists and Pop music, and the films of director Andrei Tarkovsky. A provocateur in the world of contemporary art, SVIATCHENKO’s collages and paintings have been exhibited in Denmark, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, France, England, Canada, and the USA and featured in celebrated magazines such as Dazed & Confused, AnOther, Kilimanjaro, Varoom, Elephant, This is a magazine, Rojo, Viewpoint and Blueprint. He is also the founder and editor of online photography project “Close Up and Private”, which looks to capture the discourse between clothing, fashion and image. SVIATCHENKO has completed major commissions for companies in Denmark such as Jyske Bank, Silkeborg, Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Poul Due Jensen Academy, Grundfos, and Magasin du Nord, Copenhagen. His work has been published in monographs including Sergei Sviatchenko: Collages by Rick Poynor (Schlebrügge, Vienna, 2014), Everything Goes Right and Left if You Want it. Art by Sergei Sviatchenko (Gestalten, Berlin, 2012), and Sergei Sviatchenko: I AM COLLAGE, (Lindhardt & Ringhof, Denmark 2018). Aesthetic Surprises Since 1990 Sergei Sviatchenko has lived and worked in Viborg, Denmark, where he raised a family of three. Sviatchenko has a PhD from the Kiev School of Architecture and is a Modernist inside and out. With one foot in his mother country Ukraine and the other in the Denmark, Sviatchenko combines the Eastern Constructivism and photomontage traditions with Bauhaus aesthetics as well as Western Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism and rock music. Sviatchenko’s oeuvre spans the known and the unimaginable. It cuts through the boundaries of traditional and contemporary visuals to merge pop culture with politics, personal memory with collective histories, and architecture and science with dreams and visions. Sviatchenko challenges the limits of visual representation by constantly seeking the ideal balance of deconstruction without loss of meaning. He works with space, shape and the disruption of both elements. He refers to the practice of disruption as ‘aesthetic surprises’, where elements from different contexts collide and merge. Important details are being cut out, and through the remaining fragments we are invited to shape our own images from what remains an ambiguous semifigurative abstraction. CV Sergei Sviatchenko Born 1952, Kharkov, Ukraine, USSR. Since 1990 lives and works in Viborg, Denmark Selected solo exhibition from the past 15 years 2025 Listening to the Sound of the House, The Mies van der Rohe House Museum, Berlin Another canvas , Cristel Ballroom Gallery, Amsterdam. 2024 The bronze sculpture titled HOPE, Art Center Silkeborg,Bad ,Sculpture park, Denmark Kharkiv. Riders of Hope, Art Center Silkeborg Bad, Sculpture park, digital print on aluminum, outdoor installation, Denmark Selected awards in the past 15 years 2013 Film Mirror by Mirror. Homage to Andrei Tarkovsky. With Noriko Okaku (JP/UK) - 1st prize at the International competition of experimental short films at The Lucca International Film Festival, Toscana, Italy 2nd place in Fine Art: Collage category, International Photography Awards, Los Angeles, USA 2022 Sergei Sviatchenko, Close Up And Private. Modern Classicist. Verlag For Moderne Kunst, Vienna, Austria 2