About
Oleksandr Miroshnychenko
For me, clay is a universal material in which volume, surface, and image can come together. The material always feels larger than I am, carrying more possibilities than I can fully control or predict. In my practice I work with clay as something that has its own properties and its own internal logic. What interests me is this interaction with the material — the moment when form emerges not only through intention, but through the process itself. Meanings often emerge through the process, and the work frequently leads me somewhere I did not plan to go.
Surface and texture play an important role in my work. I am interested in traces of physical interaction with the material: cracks, ruptures, irregularities, scratches, and other changes in the surface that retain tension and the memory of the process. Surface is not decoration for me — it is part of the structure of the work and a way of engaging with the physical nature of clay.
I often think of sculpture through separate layers: form, volume, surface, and image. I work with each of them individually and then bring them together. It is often in the moment of this connection that something appears which cannot be fully anticipated in advance. When I work on a sculpture, I am not simply making an object — I am experiencing something that happens with me. For me, this is where the work itself begins to emerge.
The human form remains a central image in my practice. I am interested not in portrait likeness, but in the image as a form of presence. To create these images, I use my own process: pressing soft clay into plaster molds, working with slips and pigments, and then returning the relief back into a flat plane. Through this process the image retains the memory of volume, while traces, deformations, and changes in texture remain visible on the surface.
The same form can produce different faces each time. I may cut the surface apart, tear it, and reconnect it again, changing the character of the image. Through this combination of material, image, and volume, multiple different presences can emerge from a single form.
Drawing has always been an important part of my practice. Working with clay became for me a way of bringing image and sculptural volume together within a single form. This interaction between surface, image, and material remains central in my work.
2004-2010 Specialist degree in industrial design , Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts
Work Experience
2003-2010 - Laboratory of Ceramics in Kharkov State Academy of Design and Arts
Memebership
2019 Member of International Academy of Ceramics
2019 Member of Artaxis - independent network of artists
Group exhibitions
2024 Fading faces - Kuusamo, Finland
2020- Durer.Paraphrase. – Kharkiv Art Museum, Kharkiv , Ukraine
2020 Habitat – Lavra gallery with WWF Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
2020 – Corpore- exhibition with Nataliya Korf-Ivanyuk, Mironova-gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2018 Starting point – exhibition with Segii Shaulis, Mironova gallery, Kyiv ,Ukraine
2018 Ukrainian ceramic festival TSE GLYNA, Kyiv, Ukraine
2016 Litoralis - Gogolfest,Ivano-Frankivsk,Ukraine
Juried exhibitions
2021 MINO International Ceramic Competition, Japan. Special Judges Award (selected by
Tatehata Akira)
2021 International Juried Ceramics Exhibition MARTINSONS AWARD, Rothko art centre ,
Daugavpils,Latvia
2018 International Juried Ceramics Exhibition MARTINSONS AWARD, Rothko art centre ,
Daugavpils,Latvia
2017 Gold prize on First Ukrainian ceramic biennale, National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery,
Oposhnya ,Ukraine
2015 35 CICA International Ceramic Competition of L'Alcora (Spain), Museum of Ceramics of
L'Alcora
2015 3th International Triennial of Ceramics Unicum 2015, National museum of Slovenia,
Ljubljana
2013 Ukrainian Exhibition of Ceramics Artists, National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery,
Oposhnya, Ukraine.
2010 International festival of arts and crafts. Gallery "Belyaevo", Moscow
2010 Ukrainian Exhibition of Ceramics Artists, National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery, Oposhnya,
Ukraine
Solo exhibition
2025 Metsässä – Galleria2, Pirkkala
2017 On the fracture – solo exhibition, Art Jump gallery, Poltava, Ukraine
2016 Ceramic codes – solo exhibition, Nurnberg house, Kharkiv, Ukraine
Museums collections
2018 Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre , Latvia
2017 National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery in Opishne
2015 Museu de Ceràmica de l'Alcora , Spain
2015 National museum of Slovenia, Ljubljana