Ratio

“Ratio”, a participatory project by Tamara Hridiaieva and Nazar Symotiuk at the Mercury Center for Intellectual Art, Lviv, 25 April – 25 May 2025.

From 25 April to 25 May 2025, the Mercury Center for Intellectual Art in Lviv hosted “Ratio” — a participatory art project by Tamara Hridiaieva and Nazar Symotiuk, curated by Bohdan Mysiuha. Across two floors, the artists turned the gallery into a dynamic space of artistic experiments, play and optical illusion.

About the project

“Ratio” explores rationality as an aesthetic and philosophical model, where logic, function, purity of form and minimalism take the lead. Drawing on the traditions of Suprematism, Constructivism and Minimalism, the two artists built their own “ratio-models” of the world and examined how people interact with a rationally organised space. Yet the show was less about cold calculation than about balance — finding calm, and at the same time a whole whirlwind of emotion, within strict geometric forms.

Many of the works became interactive: visitors, especially children, could play with them, turning the exhibition into a conversation with the audience in the language of clarity and minimalism.

“At first glance this art carries the spirit of some kind of virtual culture, but look closer and you see that it stands firmly on the ground of our artistic tradition and draws on very old, archaic forms.”
— Bohdan Mysiuha, curator

My part of the project consisted of rich compositions built from relief coloured wooden pegs — hardwood dowels traditionally used to join large timber structures.

“I speak to the viewer through wood, adding colour, structure and rhythm to it. What matters to me is not only the outer form that anyone can read, but the living emotion — colourful, explosive — that lives in each of my works.”
— Nazar Symotiuk