calendario eventi  :: 

X

15/5/2014

Four exhibitions

Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev

“Fear and Hope”, group exhibition including: Zhanna Kadyrova, Nikita Kadan and Artem Volokitin
17 May 2014 - 5 October 2014

The PinchukArtCentre presents “Fear and Hope” - a group exhibition of three Ukrainian artists: Nikita Kadan, Zhanna Kadyrova and Artem Volokitin, the Main Prize Winners of the PinchukArtCentre Prize since 2009. With this show artists respond to the new sociopolitical context of Ukraine formed by recent events in the country and ongoing crisis.

In November 2013, citizens of Ukraine started an unyielding protest, where people occupied Maidan, the central square in Kyiv, in defence of their ideas for future Ukraine. Artists from all over Ukraine were at the forefront of those protests. They were present there both as citizens and artists. It resulted in a flow of artistic practices, documentary images, texts, performances and actions.

With protests turning violent, being an artist inside the protests somehow lost its place. Between 18 and 20 February, more than 100 protesters were shot dead in the streets. It was the tragic highlight in more than three months of on-going peaceful protests. In the rush of events, the space to reflect artistically disappeared and was exchanged for direct action.

Bjorn Geldhof, Deputy Artistic Director of the PinchukArtCentre, curator of the show: “The exhibition “Fear and Hope” shows that there was urgency from the artist to deal with the dramatic events that have changed Ukraine. And it is that urgency that finds form into the exhibition. Through their works somehow there is a distance created which offers a platform to think and discuss the future of Ukraine but also remember what has happened in the last several months.”

In the middle of this ongoing conflict, “Fear and Hope” embodies an urgent artistic response. Nikita Kadan, Zhanna Kadyrova and Artem Volokitin deal with past and recent conditions of their country, exploring subjects of conflict, memory and individual loss. The exhibition in the PinchukArtCentre is a platform where artists can be both critical and non-partisan, and combines their new produced works with older works, revealing the presence and development of those subjects through their thinking.

The exhibition opens on the second floor with Zhanna Kadyrova, presenting a combination of three different works where she explores the theme of conflict.

Athletes (2003), a photo series Kadyrova made during a stay in Crimea, playfully refer to violence, bodily harm and protests. In combination with a brand new work Untitled (2014), a Ukrainian map cut out of an excavated burned wall found in a former soviet factory in a town of Shargorod, Kadyrova refers to Crimea as a disputed territory between Russia and Ukraine. The Ukrainian map has on the front side burned bricks and is covered on the backside with old soviet wallpaper. This monumental new work symbolizes Ukraine as a broken country and equally refers to the breakup of the Soviet Union as a whole; its industrial collapse and the unavoidable independence of Ukraine. It is a nation at the heart of a geo-political conflict but is also a nation of citizens. Kadyrova’s wallpaper represents the sudden arrival of this political conflict inside a real life. It becomes a conflict of people.

The third work, Crowd (2013) is a compilation of 40 glass panels with each panel containing a collage of one daily international newspaper dated 2012. Taking the newspapers, Kadyrova cuts out all portraits of people, re-composes them, juxtaposing persons of different social status, political position or religion side by side within the original frame of the newspaper page. Losing all reference to the text and the language apart from the title of the paper that “frames” the crowds in a geographical culture context each collage becomes a representation of a mass of people as the installation entirety represents a portrait of a crowd. The work in a way becomes a symbol for on-going protests around the world and reflects the role of mass media within those conflicts.

Nikita Kadan combines four work groups which become one thought, one gesture referring to a classical museum, dealing with the institutionalisation of memories or heritage and how a conflict of ideologies leads to a cultural amnesia changing the narration of history itself.

Through the five large showcases, Kadan constructs a narrative of a historical museum. “Yesterday, Today, Today” (2012-2014) and “Working materials. Blame of Images” (2014) artist refers to societies’ relation to heritage and (past) ideologies. While “City Hall. Model” (2014) and “Museum of Revolution. Blame of Display” (2014) draw directly from the political conflict in Ukraine.

Yesterday, Today, Today derived from the subway back in the Soviet times that was conceived as a “pleasure dome”, a palace for the working class and symbol of equality for all. The expensive materials and wonderful decorative aspects bore witness to the greatness of the Soviet ideology. Today those beautiful marbles palaces have been transformed to fit a new neo-liberal capitalistic ideology, being the place for self-adhesive film presenting advertisement.

Working materials. Blame of Images brings together images of buildings and sculptures that were constructed as an expression of the lost Soviet ideology combined with Underground Soviet pornography and Soviet books on art history.

City Hall. Model is a reduced copy of the City Hall in Odessa, Ukraine, where the authorities in January 2014 barricaded themselves using concrete blocks, an act which symbolizes how authority, which is supposed to govern people, fears the public. It represents the inability to listen or to form a dialogue with their citizens.

Museum of Revolution. Blame of Display refers to the Ukrainian house, the former Lenin’s Museum in Kyiv that was one of the key points of the protests in Kyiv. Kadan quotes parts of the building that were broken throughout the protests and repaired using “plywood”. The façade became in some way a clash of ideologies and a collage of history.

And the final work Exhibit. Inseparable (2014), a monumental showcase filled with ash, becomes a monument itself. When everything is reduced to nothing, ash is what remains. It is the final narrative, an endpoint and a starting point, there where history has disappeared.

This new series of work, together with light boxes that reflect on the commercialization of urban space is combined with Procedure Room (2009-2010) and a series of watercolours that symbolize the continuation of authoritarian practices within changing ideologies.

Artem Volokitin addresses in his new paintings the spectacular and emotional aspect of war, life and creation. In some works he focuses on the act of violence, more specifically an explosion, while in other works he deals with emptiness and personal loss.

His early painterly research into architecture of space and architecture of the body leads with this new work into a black and white geometrical expression of the mind. The monumental abstract painting represents the emptiness of inner contemplation with the new ideas and possibilities developing through the canvas like an expression of extended thinking through the void.

This work is combined with Irreversible Beauty (I and II, 2014), monumental paintings of violent explosions that deal with the horror of the sublime making reality around somehow disappear. They represent a drastic change in the artistic practice of Volokitin, a direct response to the violence that became a part of daily life.

And the last work Sisters (2006-ed.2014) is an early video, showing four sisters in front of a landscape painting, mourning for the loss of their mother. The video deals with personal loss as a natural way of life and the generational shift, with sisters taking the role of their mother as grandmother.

---

“TV Studios / Rooms Without Doors”, solo exhibition of Alevtina Kakhidze in the context of PAC-UA Re-Consideration
17 May 2014 - 22 June 2014

The PinchukArtCentre presents “TV Studios / Rooms without Doors”, a solo show by Ukrainian artist Alevtina Kakhidze that starts a new exhibitions series of the “PAC-UA Re-consideration”. Re-consideration researches the relations and influences between Ukrainian art scene of today and artistic practices of the past. It discovers the continuity of tradition in the context of interrupted development of Ukrainian art history, showing new works created by new generation of artists inspired by older artistic positions.

In “TV studios / Rooms without Doors” Alevtina Kakhidze draws inspiration from “Solid Television Studio” (1998) installation by Vassily Tsagolov. She refers to Tsagolov’s message about television stating that “what appears as a reality has been formed inside the walls of the TV studio”. Kakhidze widens this idea saying that every reality can be staged and its perception manipulated.

Playing with this message in her installation at the PinchukArtCentre, she creates her own environment, where she places her transformed appropriation of Tsagolov’s piece together with science fiction books, her first source of inspiration for inventing own realities. Linking science fiction and “TV reality” Alevtina Kakhidze blurs boundaries between constructed and experienced reality.

Alevtina Kakhidze, artist: “There were no artists, no galleries in my native town. But there was a library with a fiction department. I have read everything that was on the shelves: Saimak, Finney, Le Guin, Lem, Strugatsky. Afterwards I have become an artist, but with a special way of showing reality, – I imagine reality, in other words I fantasize it…”

Swapping reality and fiction is Kakhidze’s way to continue her story writing where the truth seems to be imaginary and the imaginary seems to be truthful. During the exhibition the artist will make five story-based live performances that will be broadcasted in a format of TV news as part of her exhibition.

Bjorn Geldhof, Deputy Artistic Director of the PinchukArtCentre: “With PAC-UA
Re-consideration the PinchukArtCentre starts a new series of shows which investigates the intuitive links between different generations of Ukrainian artists, where young generation finds inspiration or links with past artistic practices. In the case of Alevtina Kakhidze it turned out to be a very special connection not only with an artwork by Tsagolov that she had seen 12 years ago, that made such an impression and gave her an impulse to create her works today, but also the fact that she goes back to her early childhood years where her only escape from reality was to be found in science fiction books, which defined her artistic practice.”

The exhibition is organised and co-curated by Bjorn Geldhof, Deputy Artistic Director of the PinchukArtCentre, and Tatiana Kochubinska, junior curator of the PinchukArtCentre.

The show is open on the 4th floor in the “PAC-UA” space from 17 May till 22 June, 2014.

Alevtina Kakhidze (born 1973 in Zhdanovka, Donetsk region, Ukraine). She works with performance, installation, drawings, texts and design objects. She is the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award winner in 2008, First prize winner of the Competition for Young Curators and Artists, Kyiv, Center for Contemporary Art at NaUKMA in 2002.

In 2004 Kakhidze graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, graphic department. In 2004 – 2006 she studied at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands. In 2009 she was artist in residency at Open House Iaspis, Stockholm, Sweden.

Kakhidze is a co-founder of a private residency for international artists in the village Muzychi and on-line publication about art www.kram.in.ua. She is a participant of numerous international and Ukrainian art projects including up-coming public programme of the Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg, Russia, Drawing Class for Collectors within the 7th Berlin Biennial, You are at Home of Vladimir Alevtina Suzi Penelopa at Ya Gallery, Kyiv, Working for Change, a project for the Morocco Pavilion within the 54th Biennale di Venezia, I’m late for a plane that’s impossible to be late for, Якщо/Если/IF (Perm, Museum for Contemporary Art PERMM), 1989–2009: Turbulent World – Telling Time (Berlin, Art Academy, Kiev, National Art Museum of Ukraine, Moscow, National Center of Contemporary Art etc.), Endless Sphere (Kyiv, Center for Contemporary Art at NaUKMA) etc.

---

Jan Fabre. Tribute to Hiëronymus Bosch in Congo (2011-2013)
Jan Fabre. Tribute to Belgian Congo (2010-2013)
17 May 2014 - 5 October 2014

The PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv, Ukraine) presents the first solo show in Eastern Europe by the Belgian artist Jan Fabre. With this two-chapter exhibition Fabre continues elaborating his critical reflections on the Belgium’s colonial past, a theme that appeared in his oeuvre in 2002 when he used millions of beetle wings to created a monumental ceiling painting “Heaven of Delight” for the Royal Palace of Belgium in Brussels.

The first chapter, entitled “Tribute to Belgian Congo”, is inspired by the enslavement of millions of Congolese and the atrocities committed against them as well as the greed of the colonialists, who stole as much as possible of the natural riches the country had to offer. Fabre depicts the brand logos and products of companies that co-organized the horrors in the name of profit, the whole pride of Belgian industrialists of the late 19th century.

The second chapter of the exhibition, called “Tribute to Hieronymus Bosch in Congo”, deals with the absurdity and horror of what happened in the country in a more symbolical way, using both the iconography and imagery of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch. The works give artistic form to evil deeds and stand as an arresting critique of the folly that ensues when men lose their bearings in life.

Eckhard Schneider, General Director of the PinchukArtCentre: “The works for PinchukArtCentre are saturated with history and many stories – of life and death and of never-ending beauty, revealed as a dazzling counterpoint to the terror of the crimes committed.”

The show features 36 astonishing mosaics, 23 sculptures and 2 major triptychs, including 28 new works created especially for the exhibition in the PinchukArtCentre.

The scale of mosaics in the exhibition refers to traditional history paintings, allowing Fabre to show the virtuosity of his technique which brings the material itself to life. With a great sense of plasticity, Fabre paints with light, using the prismatic quality of the jewel beetle’s wing shields to break up the spectrum. The colours continually change, ranging from an intense dark green to a deep blue, creating depths and reliefs inside each single piece.

Jan Fabre (born Antwerp, 1958) first attained international recognition with works such as The Hour Blue (1977–1992) and his 1980 performance Ilad of the Bic-Art. Over the last thirty-five years, he has occupied a leading international position as a groundbreaking visual artist, theatre maker and author. Fabre has shown worldwide in solo and group exhibitions at leading institutions, among them a large-scale retrospective at the Louvre in Paris 2008.

---

Collection Platform 4: Emotion and Technology
17 May 2014 - 5 October 2014

Opening of exhibition "Collection Platform 4: Emotion and Technology" took place on 16 February 2013. The exhibition will be on display again till 5 October 2014. Information on changes in the exhibition is available below.

PinchukArtCentre continues the presentation of its collection showing Collection Platform 4: Emotion and Technology. The group exhibition includes 17 artists offering a selective view on two central and sometimes opposed notions in our lives: emotion and technology as they constantly define our perceptions of the world.

The exhibition brings together works which evoke, express and unveil emotions with art pieces dealing with technology as a subject or a tool. The show offers a view on artistic practices focusing on the one hand on how those two notions come together, and on the other hand on the tension and opposition within them.

The exhibition presents the works by Ukrainian and international artists including Sergiy Bratkov, Ilya Chichkan1, Gregory Crewdson, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky2, Damien Hirst, Carsten Höller, Martin Kobe, Jeff Koons, Oleg Kulik, Julie Mehretu, Vik Muniz3, Richard Prince, Marc Quinn, Thomas Ruff, Jürgen Teller, Xavier Veilhan and Carsten Nicolai.

The exhibition including works which have never been shown in Ukraine such as Moving image (1994–2005) by Carsten Höller, Untitled (2007) by Martin Kobe, 5th Season (Evacuation of Bewdley, Worcestershire) and 5th Season (The Lost Rivers of London) (2007) by Marc Quinn.

Series Kiev (2007) by Jürgen Teller that was created for the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 organised by the PinchukArtCentre, is shown in Kyiv for the first time.

Changing twice a year, since February 2011 the collection platform is highlighting leading artists of our time together with upcoming new positions. Featuring central Ukrainian artists as part of the Collection Platform, this program allows a new perspective on contemporary art. It is a dynamic model of interaction between the collection and new workgroups with a focus on their artistic value.

Collection Platform viewing area directly connected to selected works offers the audience a deeper understanding of artists and their works. The idea is to slow down the speed of viewing and, by giving more information, allow the visitors to acquire more knowledge, competence and experience as integral part of the education offensive.

1) Video by Ilya Chichkan “Atomic love»” had been on show till 2 November 2013.
2) Andreas Gursky’s «F1 Pit Stop II» had been on display till December 2013.
3) From 7 February two photos by Vik Muniz "Viewing from Chernobyl" and "Viewing from Hiroshima" to be featured in the exhibition.

Image: Jan Fabre, THE BELGIAN BLACKS KNOW THE CLACK OF THE WHIP, 2013 (from the series Tribute to Belgian Congo), jewel beetle wing-cases on wood, 3 parts each 227.5 x 173 x 8.1 cm.

Contact details for Media Enquiries:
Tel.: +38 044 494-1148, press@pinchukartcentre.org

PinchukArtCentre
1/3-2, "А" Block, Velyka Vasylkivska / Baseyna str., Kyiv , Ukraine 01004
Opening hours: from Tuesday through Sunday from 12 am to 9 pm
Admission is free

stampa

permanent link