Untitled 

Curator: Here we have an untitled drawing by Hryhorii Havrylenko. It's currently held in a private collection. What do you see first? Editor: The linear quality, definitely. It reminds me a bit of the intense focus found in some minimalist works, although the figure introduces a warmer element. A nude can carry all kinds of historical weight, though. Curator: True, nudes in art history carry enormous cultural baggage. This drawing seems almost clinical in its rendering, though, wouldn't you say? It's a graphite drawing. Editor: Clinical, maybe… or observant? There's a straightforwardness to it, but it almost feels like an exploration of form rather than the 'gaze' we so often associate with figurative works, which can be rather refreshing. Curator: Absolutely. The artist is working with lines alone here. The backdrop almost becomes another figure of woven lines as though to enshroud her in abstraction, her portrait against her ground. It isn't clear whether the background is meant to give us information. Editor: You raise an interesting point. Context here is very scarce indeed. What's fascinating to me is that this kind of representation also becomes tied to the politics of image-making itself, the who, how, and why that determines whose bodies we're allowed to see, and under what conditions. Curator: It invites conversation for sure, in thinking of accessibility to the subject. Its raw directness perhaps mirrors a larger impulse to capture unadorned truth of human likeness and human nature. Editor: That resonates—a direct, unvarnished attempt to capture something essential, escaping artifice and yet paradoxically achieved entirely with artifice. Curator: The power in those lines reminds us we're still only seeing the subjective intention of one person’s vision. It gives me lots to chew on.