“My name is Valera Hrishanin, my nickname is ArtMonkey, probably because I was born in the Year of the Monkey. “I was diagnosed with a neurological disease, which kept me away from any sport. I lived in depression until my whole destiny made me dream. I started drawing by mistake and noticed that inspiration and hand gradually became my salvation and a new meaning of life.
I continued to develop in art and to conquer the peaks, I participated in many shows of Ukrainian talents, I became the winner of one of them, I also participated in the show Romanians have talent, where I drew with both hands at the same time two different paintings . All this has brought me recognition and popularity.
My work was born in a workshop near my house in Ukraine, but after February 24, since the beginning of the war, I had to leave my country. I didn’t have time to take anything with me, just memories and an old book. On the pages of which I began to draw.
This is how my new works were born and I was glad that, despite the war, I sold my paintings and sent some of the money to my family and friends who stayed in Ukraine.
I managed to send my artwork from Ukraine to Romania, so I will be able to open my personal exhibition, but the main works will be the ones I created on sheets of an old book, when I was living in a hotel in Bucharest”.
This is, in short, in my words but his feelings, the story of Valera Hrishanin - ARTMONKEY. But his story on torn pages of paper or on canvas tells much more. It carries in it a dream of peace and betrays nostalgia for a world that no longer exists today …
After going through a difficult time, the distance between a depressive pandemic and a devastating war, all the anger that his soul feels pours into the drawings. Thick, pressed lines converge in a few portraits: a woman in the colors of Ukraine, a series of four young women, in black touches, furrowed by red ones - the assaulted women. All on torn sheets of a book and glued together with scotch tape! That’s all the war has left for him to express himself!
In drawing he distills his emotions and finds in art the perfect form of expression and reflection on the world in which he still lives. The reality captured in its immutable essence or in the dynamics of social change is the matter that the artist transfigures. It is inspired by scenes and events that he witnessed.
Monkey tells us his story about the war in the neighborhood, in such a sincere and empathetic way that only true artists can put history and suffering, human depth and the defiance of weapons in the same equation, with such force of experience.
A manifesto of faith, that beyond tragedy there is hope, because God cannot abandon his creation!
Curator: Adina Rențea
President of ASAF