Works by Late Ukrainian Artist Are Showcased
At Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus in October

Brooklyn, N.Y. – The works of late Ukrainian artist Petr Belenok – which often depicted the alienation of the individual confronted by immeasurable forces – will be shown at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus in October.

The exhibition, “Petr Belenok,” will take place in the Campus’s Resnick Gallery from October 1 to October 31, as part of a conference exploring Eastern-European culture, “Mapping the Eastern European Diaspora II: Ukraine,” on Wednesday, October 6. An opening reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m.

"I am the representative of a new direction – panic realism,” the artist has said. “I am not interested in the minute observations of life; I observe the world and its problems from a detached position in space. Some of my art is prophecy. The creativity of Kafka, Joyce, and Dostoevsky is akin to mine.”

Born in Korogod, Ukraine in 1938 (a village so close to Chernobyl that it was abandoned after the 1986 disaster), Belenok studied sculpture at the Kiev Art Institute, graduating in 1963. Later, he moved to Moscow and joined the official USSR Union of Artists (as a sculptor). Belenok's first solo exhibition was in 1972. He exhibited in Russia, Europe and the United States since 1970, including the ground-breaking nonconformist exhibitions in Moscow in 1975. His work is represented in several museum collections, including the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum (New Brunswick, NJ), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg) and The State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow). Belenok died in Moscow in 1991.

Gallery hours are from Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday/Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call Gallery Manager Nancy Grove at (718) 488-1198.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Some 30,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s three residential and three regional campuses, including more than 12,000 at the Brooklyn Campus. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.