Veronika Hapchenko

Visual artist, painter. Born in Kyiv, where she studied stage design for puppet theatre at the K. Karpenko-Kary National University of Cinema and Television, she lives and works in Kraków, where she graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. Hapchenko was a finalist of the 19th edition of the Hestia Artistic Journey competition and of the 2023 Polityka Passports.

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Veronika Hapchenko, photo Szymon Sokołowski

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Veronika Hapchenko abandoned her studies in puppet theatre set design because, as she said, she was not interested in the kind of relationship between director and set designer. She found her way to Kraków partly thanks to Mykhailo Boychuk, an artist belonging to the generation of the so-called ‘executed revival’, a painter murdered in the Stalinist purges who had a fundamental influence on the shape of Ukrainian painting, especially religious painting, in the first half of the 20th century. In Kyiv, Boychuk gathered a large group of students around him. At the Kyiv academy, among others, the modernist Karol Hiller from Łódź came under his wing. Boychuk himself in turn studied at the Kraków academy, and in Poland he struck up a friendship with, among others, Stefan Żeromski. It was Boychuk who led Hapchenko to the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts.

She began to confront Soviet myths while still at university. In the 19th edition of the Hestia Artistic Journey competition, she presented a painting and sculpture installation entitled Pavlik, dedicated to the Soviet child hero Pavlik Morozov. Created by Stalinist propaganda as a role model for Soviet youth, Morozov was supposed to be an exemplary young communist, the founder of one of the first pioneer organisations, who handed over his own kulak father to the authorities after discovering a conspiracy in which he participated. As a result, he became a communist martyr, murdered by his grandfather. Morozov, at first a role model, putting the good of Soviet society above family ties, after a few decades became one of the symbols of totalitarian indoctrination.

In Hapchenko’s work, this former hero, whose story was deconstructed after the collapse of the Soviet Union as probably largely false, resembles a dummy with a completely flat, sad face. His chest is covered by a concentric motif composed, among other things, of darting eyes and gaping mouths, referring to a history of denunciation elevated to the status of a heroic act. Pavlik sits in front of a plastic table set with red candles and a gloomy painting with a motif of a single eye and red masks emerging from a black background, evoking irresistible occult associations.

While here the ‘exorcising’ of Soviet myths still took place on a symbolic level, in Hapchenko’s subsequent works, themes related to occult and esoteric fascinations in Russia during the early 20th century and the years immediately after the October Revolution take centre stage. Hapchenko’s interest in the esoteric underpinnings of the Soviet Union was born out of her observation of contemporary post-Soviet reality, the remnants of the former system in the urban space of Kyiv, and a recurring fascination with esotericism at the dawn of the new millennium. As the artist recalled, esoteric literature was prominent in the library of her mother, an architect who also studied astrology for some time. Hapchenko therefore decided to go back to the roots.

The artist is interested in the esoteric undercurrents of Soviet history, disturbing the image of a country organised according to a strictly materialist, rational ideology. In this case, the fascination with occult movements of the 20th century does not mean naïve romanticisation or idealisation. The artist is also sensitive to their internal contradictions, the contrast between the proclaimed ideals of freedom and an extremely hierarchical organisation, leading to the subordination of the adepts to the will of the master in power – in which, incidentally, the occult movements again prove surprisingly close to the organisation of the totalitarian state.

Hapchenko’s practice leaned, among other things, towards the beginnings of the October Revolution and the parallel renaissance of esoteric groups that sometimes exerted a significant influence on the revolutionaries, as well as the artists who sympathised with them. Thus, her paintings include references to, among others, the figure of Georgi Gurdjieff, a mystic active at the beginning of the 20th century with a biography that is as sensational as it is difficult to verify factually. Gurdjieff was allegedly a Russian spy in Tibet and at the same time a tutor to the Dalai Lama. According to some, he later introduced Joseph Stalin to the secrets of the occult. In the painting Battle of the Magi, a greyscale composition with arabesque motifs that seem as fleeting as a puff of cigarette smoke, we can find a reference to Gurdjieff’s ballet of the same title. The ballet was a kind of exposition of the theory of man as a helpless machine whose actions are controlled by external influences, including the movements of the planets. Hapchenko subtly conveys the idea of the human self as the sum of many masks and impulses – upon closer inspection of the seemingly abstract ornament, we can see the empty face-masks inscribed into it.

In a way, the artist reaches back to the origins of the avant-garde, with many direct or more subtle threads linked to theosophy, occultism and esotericism, while at the same time using a contemporary painting language. Despite her immersion in the art and intellectual climate of the early Soviet Union, she therefore does not attempt to step into the shoes of the former avant-garde, but refers to its heritage from the perspective of a century away. The artist’s technique conveys this distance. The paintings, created with an airbrush, i.e. by spraying paint onto the canvas, are perfectly flat, luminous and the transitions extremely smooth. Initially, the artist used the airbrush as a transition from creating digital graphics to painting – it was the tool that allowed her to achieve effects closest to computer-designed graphics. Over time, it also proved to be the ideal tool for depicting the subjects that interested her. From Hapchenko’s spray-painted canvases, the shapes of figures and objects emerge in a fleeting, iridescent and blurred form, indistinct like dream visions.

The theme of Russian cosmism was the subject of paintings and objects presented by the artist at her first solo exhibition at Warsaw’s Import Export gallery, entitled False Door. In it, Hapchenko primarily evoked the figure of Nikolai Fyodorov, the founder of cosmism, convinced that technological progress would guarantee human immortality, as well as the possibility of resurrecting all hitherto living beings. These ideas also gave rise to the more scientific activities of one of the pioneers of cosmonautics, the Russian scientist of Polish origin Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

In 2023, during Warsaw Gallery Weekend, the artist presented her exhibition Interloper, awarded by the ING Polish Art Foundation, at the same gallery. This time, the artist referred to the heritage associated with the history of Soviet-era Ukraine. The starting point for her paintings was primarily the monumental mosaics created by Ukrainian-born Ivan Lytovchenko in Pripyat, a few years before the catastrophe in nearby Chernobyl, which turned the area into a ghost town. By reaching back into the history of a city that was meant to be a model demonstration of Soviet strength, yet was designed at a time when the empire was already weakening, and soon to be buried under radioactive sludge, the artist remains grounded in history while also pointing toward contemporary concerns. Just as the ideas of cosmism seem still alive in the concepts of post-humanist human evolution and technocrats’ dreams of conquering the cosmos, the Soviet-era mosaics, today sometimes destroyed as a result of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, remind us of the fragility of imperial narratives.

Selected solo exhibitions:

2023 – Interloper, Import Export, Warsaw
2022 – False Door, Import Export, Warsaw
2021 – Cherchez le Mage, I Gallery, Kraków
2019 – Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, Dworek Białoprądnicki Cultural Centre, Kraków

Selected group exhibitions:

2023 – Linhas Tortas, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brazil;
My Rhino Is Not a Myth, Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara, Romania;
Invisible Until It’s Broken, Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany;
Transitional States, Bielska Galeria BWA, Bielsko-Biała.
2022 – Aurora Nostri Temporis, BWA Tarnów;
Is it Real? The Power of Imagination, Rondo Sztuki, Katowice;
Citizens of the Cosmos: Anton Vidokle with Veronika Hapchenko, Fedir Tetyanych and the Collection of the International Cosmist Institute, Łódź Museum of Art;
Anxiety Comes at Dusk, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art.
2021 – Into These Hectic, Flamboyant and Bewildering Days, I Am Transported by Thought, Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Warsaw;
2021 – If Wishes Were Like Fish, Everyone Would Put Up Nets, Krupa Gallery, Wrocław.

21st century painting

contemporary polish painter

contemporary art

contemporary polish art

contemporary polish artists