WODEMAN, BORN IN 1975

Wodeman is the artistic name of Oleh Derevianko, an artist and thinker working across oil painting, oil pastel, digital, mixed media, and poetry.

 

​Since the 1990s, Oleh has been engaged with art in many meaningful ways — exploring its ideas, philosophy, history, contemporary life, experimenting across different forms and media, and gradually finding his own artistic practice. His involvement in the professional art scene dates back to the early 2000s, but it was only recently, in 2023, after years of parallel activities in entrepreneurship, Ukrainian civil society, and public service, that he made a major shift and fully dedicated himself to his artistic practice. Since then, much of his artwork has gathered around images of the unknown: unknown heroes, imagined faces and portraits, the symbolism of silence, and, as he puts it, “the roads that keep returning to me.” In 2024, Oleh’s artwork was first presented to the public in a debut solo exhibition under the name Wodeman.

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Born in 1975 in a small town in the forest-rich northern region of Ukraine, Oleh has lived in Kyiv since 1992, when not traveling the world or retreating to his beloved countryside.

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