The name of the project "Enfant terrible" refers to the book by Jean Cocteau and the opera of the same name by Philip Glass. The curators agreed that the series of interpreted Velázquez infants and the artist's passion for creepy details become the viewer's guides to the deep meaning of his works.

The "Enfant terrible" project consists of three independent plots:

The Vatican line is inspired by the aesthetics of Paolo Sorrentino. In this context, Yuriy Syvyryn is interested in the projection of a person who is on the border between culture and nature, culture and civilization. The answer is provided by the painting "Watching", based on the deep aesthetics of the film "The New Pope", where surgeons are preparing for surgery in the foreground, and the clergy are watching in the background. The work was written in January and first appeared at Yuriy Syvyryn's retrospective exhibition at BAF in February 2020. Already in March, the world entered the era of the pandemic. In the work "Observation" the state of foreboding of an imminent disaster is recorded.

The second plot – the infants – unfolds under the influence of the self-sufficient beauty and skill of Velázquez. Answering the question "why Velázquez in particular", Yuriy explains: "Because it's skillful and beautiful... I wanted to walk a parallel path with Velázquez and try to feel the way he felt while working on Menin."

The third part is Yuriy's intermediate works made on photo paper. They do not project a meaningful philosophy, but are rather an introspection of the artist's reflective experiences regarding the psycho-emotional states of relaxation, anxiety, aggression and balance.

Yuriy Syvyryn is a talented artist with a recognizable handwriting, a special ideology and concept. His works are an example of resistance to fragmented thinking, which reflects the replacement of living reality with a digital one. He expresses his voice through painting. Heroes and plots isolated from many contexts become the protagonists of his works.

Yuriy Syvyryn's creative work (artist, installer, video artist) is familiar both in Ukraine and abroad, the artist has held many personal exhibitions. His painting was exhibited in the Odesa Art Museum, twice in the National Museum "Kyiv Art Gallery", in the Odesa Museum of Modern Art, in the Bereznitsky Art Foundation (BAF) and in the Art Arsenal in Kyiv. The artist participated in the main and parallel projects of Kyiv Art Week, in the Burn Babylon (GogolFest) and "Media Addiction" projects at the National Center "Ukrainian House".

The works of Yuriy Syvyryn are represented in the famous collections of the Odessa Art Museum, the National Museum "Kyiv Art Gallery", the Museum of Modern Art of Odessa and in the private collections of members of the Club of Collectors of Modern Art of Ukraine, as well as in the collections of famous Western and domestic collectors.

Yuri Syvyryn's creativity is highly appreciated by both experts and colleagues:

- artist Oleksandr Roitburd characterizes Syvyryn's work as follows: "The artist invites you to walk through the metaphysical spaces of your own and collective unconscious";

- Lyudmila Bereznytska (curator) notes: "Yuriy Syvyryn tries to call a spade a spade and thereby exposes wounds. "What is the time?" — the main question that worries the author";

- Taras Voznyak (general director of the Lviv National Art Gallery named after B. G. Voznytskyi) outlines Yuri Syvyryn's artistic practices in the following way: "...his painting is twilight... or poser twilight, as is always fashionable in times of abandonment and decadence? But it doesn't look like that. He has almost no childish bravura. His twilight is not obtrusive, not as theatrical as we often see. It seems that they are real...";

- Victoria Burlaka (art critic and curator) emphasizes: "By creating multi-headed media doubles, Syvyryn does what is commonly called the "deconstruction" of classical works";

- one of the luminaries and leaders of the Ukrainian New Wave in art Arsen Savadov writes about Syvyryn: "I see his new poetics - he could take a place among the best new young poets of the generation...".

Download the catalogue to the project Enfant terrible:

More about the project:

https://antikvar.ua/enfant-terrible/

http://lvivgallery.org.ua/exhibitions/vystavka-yuriya-syvyryna-enfant-terrible

https://supportyourart.com/columns/enfant-terrible-pro-vystavku-yuriya-syvyryna-u-lvovi/