AntonKaryuk

Biography

Born and raised in Dnipro, a large industrial city in Central Ukraine, Anton has received a master's degree in Architecture at the Pridneprovsk State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture in 2011. At the age of 22 Anton moved to Kyiv, where he worked as a journalist for several publications. Since 2015 he has been developing his professional career as an artist. Starting with abstract canvases, gradually he has turned his attention to interdisciplinary mediums such as installation, performance and video art. In 2020, Anton studied Performance at the Poznan Art Academy, under the guidance of professor and artist Janusz Baldyga. Anton migrated to Lithuania, where he lives and works now, in 2017. He is a team member of the annual Vilnius Queer Festival Kreivės. Anton's works have been presented at personal and group exhibitions in various locations, including the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art (Poland), Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz (Dresden, Germany), Galerie Rasch (Kassel, Germany), Kulturhuset Leoparden (Sweden), Gallery of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association (Lithuania), and other. Anton has taken part in a number of art residencies throughout Europe. In 2020, the artist received the Scholarship of the Minister of Culture of Poland Gaude Polonia, and the Individual State Scholarships for Culture and Art Creators by the Lithuanian Culture Council, also was nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize for young Ukrainian artists. Not limited to museums and galleries, Anton's artistic practices shift to the wider public space. Overall, the artist searches for an abstract visual language and minimalist execution, exploring personal and socially-sensitive topics. In 2010, I moved to one of the most polluted capitals in Europe, the city of Kyiv. I am convinced that almost all of our environmental problems stem from deep-seated social problems, and so I have devoted a number of my works to the irrationality that dominates society. I am intent on conveying my belief that today's market society is built around the cruel motto “grow or die” – a completely impersonal, self-perpetuating mechanism based on trade for profit and industrial expansion for its own sake. My childhood and adolescence were spent under these fantastically cruel rules of the game. Taking part in the art scenes of Ukraine and Lithuania remains my priority. But not confined by my own walls, I have been lucky to work with curators and fellow artists from Germany, Sweden, Turkey, Poland and Norway, as well as to participate in numerous residences. I remain a humanist in that I hold that human beings have the right and responsibility to decide the meaning and form of their lives. I write, photograph, film, paint and build in order to capture the beauty of marginality.