Art on TARGETS as symbol reaching the human goals by Andrii Chernovil
Author Kamil Vokhidov
Showing Character
A solid foundation of art education, perhaps, is the single most important avenue for liberating an individual from conformity. In the case of Andrii Chernovil, however, his years at Grekov Odesa Art College, Ukraine’s most prominent art educational institution, remain much more than just an acquisition of techniques and skills. The time at the art college and particularly a mentorship with renowned master Vitaliy Alekberov enriched young Andrii’s ability to express himself with philosophical sophistication and encode spiritual meanings on his canvases. Even today, Andrii experiments and finds ways of interplaying between the plethora of shapes and the spectrum of colors, supplemented with his idiosyncratic calligraphy, which has taken years to develop.
Proprietary Methods
Andrii’s collections are not confined to singular canvases that simply demonstrate his talents. Rather, his artworks aim to evoke multifaceted visual experiences. Andrii needs no conditions to find or develop ideas. They find him instead. Andrii’s spontaneous and yet brave brushstrokes in a variety of techniques and tones turn into images, compelling viewers to decode philosophical symbolism and meanings hidden behind Andrii’s artistic choices. Reflecting on his spontaneous composition of colors and geometric patterns, Andrii engineers the mood and attitude of the canvas. His work is half-intuitive, his ideas originate deep down in his subconscious self as they interweave with Andrii’s emotional being, his state of mind, temperament, and practices of yoga and contemplation.
Being an avid traveler, Andrii has been living and working in the Middle East since 2014. Multiple art collections and series of artworks have been created since then. One of the series, Portrait of Contemporaries (Family), was commissioned by the well-known Sheikh Saud Foundation. In 2014, while residing in Doha, Qatar, Andrii and curator, gallerist, and consultant Nadiia Chernovil felt prompted to organize a global art movement for peace, IQTargets.
Exposition of IQTargets
The project travels alongside with the founders and thus far it has been exhibited at The Saatchi Gallery, London; Artexpo New York; Art Basel in Basel; Florence
Biennale, and other respected events. The intent behind the project is to use paper shooting targets and invite people worldwide to share their messages of peace on them. With the geography of people participating in the project exceeding 56 countries, Andrii gathers those target papers and assembles them into canvases for his masterpieces.
Understanding of targets
The notion of the target lies in the dimension of human achievement and virtue. Using abstract and figurative approaches, Andrii intends to touch the hearts of his audience, provoking his viewers to embark on a journey of self-exploration. Integrating people and their messages written on target papers into his art, Andrii unites individual messages and transforms them into one big positive message by compiling those papers together. This artistically serves as a metaphor for unity, whereby those participating in the project feel a sense of belonging and share a similar identity of peace-builders worldwide.
This is the way people co-create and make historic contributions to global art and culture.
Stereotypes of targets and broader ideals of goal-setting and world peace
It is noteworthy that Andrii’s interpretation of target papers is that the target conceptually ceases to be a shooting object and rather becomes a symbol of setting and achieving goals. The philosophy behind that entails the gradual transformation of the previously negative stereotype that the target is a symbol of aggression. Rather, Andrii treats targets as symbols of human virtuousness, aiming to popularize the idea of the well-being of the world. Noticing the public’s high interest in the project shared among people from countless walks of life, the IQTargets creative team collaborates with galleries, museums, and art and auction houses to exhibit his works and those of other artists to auction and later donate the proceeds to charity.
Andrii wants to prove that committing to a small action such as writing positive messages on tiny target papers can, in fact, enable people to collaborate and help those in need, thereby bringing transformative change towards building universal peace. Besides, Andrii desires to bring as many people into the world of high art as possible, allowing them to become a part of it and place themselves in the history of the world.
IQTargets attracts exhibition visitors who are ordinary people, namely teachers, athletes, diplomats, policymakers and, of course, artists.
In unpredictable times such as now, when the world is on the edge of the unfortunate escalating conflict between different countries, the notion of peace and unity is incredibly important. Inspired by painter Nicholas Roerich, Andrii believes in the ideal of The Peace Through Culture, hoping that one day in the forthcoming future, his dream of world peace and world harmony will become a reality.
