Oleg Kalashnik is a Ukrainian artist. He works with decorative painting, sculpture (miniature and landscape gardening), and easel graphics. Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (2012). Member of the art restoration association “Red Horse”.
Oleg Kalashnik was born in the city of Akhtyrka, Sumy region. Graduated from Kharkiv Art School with a degree in graphic design (1998) and Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts with a degree in sculpture (2004). The artist’s works are kept in museums and private collections in Ukraine, Germany, France, Russia, Portugal, and the USA. Lives and works in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
bronze, 32x19x6 cm
bronze, 17x27x13
Bunny II, bronze
24x10x11 cm
Enfant Terrible
project
“When I was little, the neighbor across the street was building a house. I took broken bricks from it and chiseled miniature bricks from them — I wanted to build a small house for soldiers. Can you imagine? A broken brick, in which you cut off the edges and make an even smaller brick…”. — Oleg Kalashnik
Endless rows of soldiers hide behind the walls of the center. The concrete space will turn into an abandoned playground — a portal to the artist’s childhood school years. The toy is not what it seems. It bestows its owner with power the likes of which the world does not
know. And although over time this artifact of childhood disappears under the rubble of “adult things”, in fact, it never loses its power. It manifests itself in different guises, sometimes as a nostalgic memory, sometimes as an unconscious reproduction of experience.
Oleg Kalashnik’s soldier turns into a once-hidden children’s box, where strange “treasures” have been preserved through the ages. He is like a brick from which a boy builds a world of fantasy, and an adult builds a myth of his own childhood and searches for the meaning of his game.
Text: Maria Varligina