Yakunin Serhii

Serhii Yakunin was born in 1954 in Lviv.

During 1972-1977 he studied at the Lviv State Institute of Applied and Decorative Art (Lviv National Academy of Arts) at the Faculty of Ceramics.

He entered the art world in the 1970s as a sculptor. And in the late ’80s — early ’90s he began to work in the field of land art.

In the late ’70s, while experimenting with volume, space and chiaroscuro as a sculptor, he looked for an opportunity to go beyond the classical approach to sculpture, to find another form for the expression of ideas in three-dimensional space.

In the early 1980s, Serhii Yakunin met Moscow conceptualists: Eduard Gorokhovskiy, Ilya Kabakov, Ihor Makarevich, Boris Orlov, and Dmitriy Prigov.

The meeting with the artist Francisco Infante (Moscow) was crucial, and it confirmed the correctness of the direction of his search.

The group project «The Invitation to a discussion» (1987) was one of the most significant exhibitions in Yakunin’s artistic life. It was held in St Mary of the Snows Church (a museum of photography at that time) in Lviv (organizers — Volodymyr Arofikin and Yuriy Sokolov), and it brought together many alternative artists.

In 1989, 1991, 1992 he participated in Sedniv Plein air sessions (organized by Tiberiy Silvashi, Oleksandr Solovyov and Yuliy Sinkevych). During these events, he worked on various techniques of graphic art, painting, and sculpture.

In 1992 in Sedniv, together with other artists, he started to work with the natural environment. They created art objects out of household garbage, old household utensils (carts, boats, old buckets). Also, they worked with ice, weaved objects from vines, and used fallen trees in the works.

There were attempts to shape the idea of working with natural materials, light, sound and projections into something suitable for an exhibition hall. The project «3/3» (1994), created together with Anna Sydorenko and Glib Vysheslavskiy, was the first work of such kind. 

Currently, Serhii Yakunin works in the field of site-specific art. The works are usually inspired by certain situations in the environment.

He participated in the following land art symposia: «Wo ist Kunst? Laboratory-99» (Frauenfeld, Switzerland; 1999), «Poetry: Installation and performance» (New York, USA; 1999), «Periferic-3» (Jassy, Romania; 2003), «Donumenta» (Regensburg, Germany), «The Border Area» (Mohrytsia, Sumy region, Ukraine), «The Mythogenesis » (Vinnytsya, Ukraine), «Khortytsya» (Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine), «Spring Wind» (Kyiv, Ukraine), «Myropillya» (Sumy region, Ukraine).