NEW YORK, NY.- Re:Create—Christina Saj's Transformative Paintings is an installation by the Ukrainian American contemporary artist currently on view at The Ukrainian Museum. The artworks on display in the Re:Create gallery greet the viewer with an explosion of vivid color and a myriad of stylized shapes that allude to nature as well as constructed objects. However, the twelve compositions with Saj's signature bright and colorfully patterned palette are much more than just works of art to be appreciated and studied. The artist invites visitors to take part in the creative process by changing her paintings, and then invites online viewers to participate by studying these various “new” versions. The installation thus functions on two levels: a tactile and transformative experience for those who visit the gallery in person, and a visual feast in virtual space for those who choose to watch the exhibition's evolution online. The Museum hopes Re:Create will be equally engaging and cathartic for the participant who joins the artist as a collaborator, and for the online observer of the evolving images.

Each piece in the exhibition is a large, titled, metal-backed panel painted by Saj. The artist’s painted images act as a framework upon which visitors can build a personalized new work. The viewer is asked to respond to the painted panels not by adding more paint but by working with a variety of pre-painted, magnetized objects—abstract, figurative, patterned, big, small—designed to adhere to the panels. Visitors can add, remove, and rearrange the pieces as they see fit, and then post photographs of their creations on Instagram using the #RecreateAtUM hashtag. Thus Saj’s original works provide a backdrop for the new creations, and the interaction by visitors offers a multidimensional experience that is at once instructional, insightful, imaginative, and, above all, stimulating and fun.

As museum visitors increasingly seek to engage in more immersive experiences, Saj meets the challenge in this groundbreaking exhibition by changing the dialogue between artist and viewer. She encourages the audience to co-create a piece of art which then remains as part of the virtual exhibition. Participants documenting their work using the Instagram hashtag #RecreateAtUM allow their rendering to become part of a continuous feed of images created for the duration of the installation. Following #RecreateAtUM allows avid Instagram users to watch an ever-transforming portfolio of art through the exhibition's lifetime.

Making art is a visceral activity, and Saj’s goal with this installation is to engage casual museum visitors as "co-artists" without getting bogged down by messy materials and long involved processes. Their actions and reactions are immediate, and the resulting works become part of a dialogue between collaborators.

I want visitors to experience working with color, shape, and ideas in order to see how abstraction and pattern happen and relate, and how combinations of different images allow for reinvention and even distortion of meaning. I am thus inviting the otherwise casual observer to become co-creator and to engage in thinking like an artist. As artists, we are always being asked to explain our process, and here I have consciously allowed the audience in with the intent to encourage individual commitment to the creative process.

Saj wants visitors who have never created a painting before to think about their compositions in ways that artists are trained to do. She hopes that the experience will leave participants with a deeper understanding and more rewarding encounters with artworks everywhere.

Organized tours of Re:Create are encouraged, and in some cases arrangements may be made to invite the artist herself as the instructional guide. Individual visitors may enjoy the exhibition anytime during gallery hours, but groups must make advance reservations due to limited capacity.

Re:Create—Christina Saj's Transformative Paintings will be on view through April 27, 2019.