What the "Inscription" says: mysterious abstractions were shown in an exhibition of abstract painting on large-format canvases, opened in the Odessa Art Museum (Sofievskaya, 5a).

The exhibition "Inscription" consists of 30 works by the Kyiv artist Vladimir Budnikov from different series created by him in 2016-2019.

Vladimir Budnikov - Honoured Art Worker of Ukraine, Professor of the National Academy of Arts. one of the leaders of the Ukrainian new avant-garde, developing his own artistic language for about 40 years. His personal exhibitions were held in Germany, France, Austria, and are annually held in Ukrainian museums and galleries.

Usually, artists use the expression "paint a picture", meaning the creation of images, but Budnikov writes pictures, almost like a novel.

While working, I focused on the circumstances under which language can take place, as well as on what threatens or hinders it. Moreover, I took up "writing", as if I returned painting to its literal essence - the principle according to which speech becomes living, "living writing". The inscription becomes the border between the image and the narrative, being in both fields at the same time, embodying in its perspective the way in which the abstract drawing retains the content.

Vladimir Budnikov

When communicating with his granddaughter in the messenger, the artist uses emoji, but the thoughts about where the world is heading, what will happen to the culture of writing, worries and worries him. You can not read the inscription, take it as a decorative vignette, but you can see in it a formidable "mene, tekel, perez" - for the viewer to decide.

In Odessa, Svetlana Yusim works closely with the interspersing of inscriptions into the space of paintings, but that's another story.