SKETCHES OF THE MONUMENTAL at The Naked Room gallery

On November 13, the Naked Room gallery will open the new exhibition SKETCHES OF THE MONUMENTAL, where will be presented sketches of mosaics and other monumental projects made in the 1960-80s. Most of the exhibited temperas, watercolors, collages, and drawings weren’t displayed publicly before. In addition, sticker pack for telegram featuring Ukrainian Soviet mosaics were developed especially for the exhibition. 

The excerpt from the exhibition concept:
«The monumental mosaics can be seen literally in every location of Ukraine. Most of them were created during the last 30 years of The Soviet Union's existence. These works have an extraordinary fate. They were conceived primarily as the public space decorations. But citizens never thought about the mosaics as something valuable. Monumental art in most occasions was perceived as an official order and as a part of propaganda. But in recent years, thanks to independent researchers, art and photo projects, it was rethought and these masterpieces of Ukrainian art finally acquired real recognition and publicity. And even more, they made influence on the fields of fashion, design, media, tattoo studios and became popular throughout very different young audiences, which don’t perceive them only as a soviet retrospection anymore. 
The exhibition in The Naked Room reveals the scope, beauty, and uniqueness of Ukrainian monumentality under the new vision. The exhibited sketches — aren’t just working materials and preliminary samples. It’s solo unique works — easel versions of mosaics. But the artists just have not used smalt, ceramics, multi-colored stone and glass. Instead of this, they have taken paper, cartoon, tempera, gouache, and application technique. Some of the works were the official layout for a final project (saved factory prints are the obvious evidence for this), but some served as inspiration, uninhibited creative practice during the process of seeking bigger forms. In such sketches, the artists could let themselves much more than it was allowed to realize in final panels. Because of this, chamber versions look more independent, spectacularly, and bring to light the full variety of professional capabilities of their authors.»‎

Also, as a part of the exhibition in The Naked Room will be held the presentation of the new guide book “Ukraine. Art For Architecture. Soviet Modernist Mosaics 1960 to 1990”. The authors of the book — Baytsim Polina and Nikiforov Yevgen will be ready to tell more about the importance of preservation and studying monumental art. The publishing house of the book is DOM Publishers (Berlin) and the publication partner is Goethe-Institut Ukraine. The book is available to purchase in our The Naked Books corner. 

The gallery is open daily from 11:00 to 20:00
Admission is free in protective masks.Share: