What's on? Editor's pick
16 august, 2023
Feature
Dates: 18.08.2023 — 09.09.2023
Address: Ivano-Frankivsk, Sichovykh Striltsiv Street 15, Assortment Room
Working Hours: Mon-Sun, 12:00-18:00
Opening: August 18, 18:00
Ticket Price: Free admission
Organizer(s): ArtPole, Assortment Room
No One Is an Island is a personal exhibition by Olya Mykhailiuk, showcasing her collaboration with musicians SK.EIN, Suren Voskanyan, and other sound artists throughout 2021–2023. Here you will find:
— photo and textual impressions/reflections of her personal experience in Crimea;
— audiovisual journeys to Mariupol and the part of Kherson region currently under occupation;
— interviews recorded a week ago in Kherson.
The project's title is derived from the first line of the poem by English metaphysical poet John Donne:
«No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.»
The project began in 2021 as a series of audiovisual compositions about Crimea. Sound and video were recorded in the village of Khory, located 30 km from the peninsula. Later, the project evolved into a contemplative observation of grass, stars, sea, and sky above the Ukrainian steppe. This led to the creation of six compositions, one of which was filmed at the North Crimean Canal, which draws water from the Kakhovka Reservoir.
«By the end of 2021, collaborations with musicians from Mariupol and Istanbul took place, followed by a tour — Kherson-Kyiv-Ivano-Frankivsk, where other musicians, sound artists, and visual artists joined the project. Everyone discussed Crimea and the delicate land connection that unites us. In a matter of months — in February 2022 — it is precisely this land connection that hostile machinery will cross onto the mainland. Suren Voskanyan, a musician from Mariupol participating in the project, will find himself in the occupied city,» the curators explain.
By the end of March 2022, Suren managed to escape from Mariupol and take his duduk — the instrument he used to work on #no_one_is_an_island — with him. A few months later Polish sound artist Tomasz Sikora joined the project. In November 2022, Suren, Tomasz, and Olya recorded an audiovisual work in Kyiv, dedicated to the Azov Sea region.
After the explosion of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station in June 2023, Olya and SK.EIN returned to narrating their audiovisual Kherson story, fueled by the belief in its eventual restoration.
Open Studios Day, Instytut Avtomatyky
Dates: 19.08.2023
Address: Kyiv, Nahirna Street 22, Instytut Avtomatyky
Working Hours: 19:00
Ticket Price: Free admission
Organizer(s): Instytut Avtomatyky
Artists working in the studios of the Institute of Automation invite you to Open Studios Day every third Saturday of the month. On the last Saturday of summer, you'll have the opportunity to view works by these artists:
— Maria Vlas (Room 203a);
— Maxim Mazur (Room 207);
— Svitlana Ahranovska (Room 324);
— Marta Nyrkova (Room 316);
— Nikita Vlasov (Room 326a);
— Sabina Mahnitofon (Room 331);
— Samuel Ellinghoven (Room 425);
— Molly Route (Room 404);
— Ihor Selyemenyev (Room 404);
— Yulia Boychuk (Room 409);
— Halyna Abramova (Room 410b);
— Roman Pedan.
Audiovisual performance From the Everyday Collection by PERERVA studio
Dates: 20.08.2023
Address: Kyiv, Tereshchenkivska Street 15, Khanenko Museum
Working Hours: 16:00
Ticket Price: 200 UAH
Organizer(s): Khanenko Museum, PERERVA Studio
PERERVA is a self-organized studio located in Podil district (Bratska Street, 6), founded by Oleksandr Yeltsin and Oleksandr Guzeev in 2022.
From the Everyday Collection is a live improvisational performance by participants of the self-organized PERERVA Studio. It's an audiovisual immersion formed at the intersection of analog and digital sound and video processing methods.
«The artists aim to convey the oscillation of emotional states, paying special attention to the development of overall dramaturgy over time. The sound component of the performance is constructed on the boundary between music and audio collages, arrangements of Ukrainian musical works, soundscapes, literary texts, and quotes from films,» as stated in the event announcement.
Exhibition From Great Love by Karina Synytsya
Dates: 20.08.2023
Address: Kyiv, Budivelnykiv Street 12, Depot 12/59
Working Hours: 17:00
Ticket Price: Free admission
Organizer(s): Depot 12/59 apartment-gallery
Karina Synytsya is a Ukrainian artist from Severodonetsk who lives and works in Kyiv. Her main mediums are painting and collage. Her practice is centered around portraying human emotions, particularly loneliness and alienation.
Depot 12/59 is a self-organized apartment gallery in Darnytsia district, founded by Tamara Turlun and Andriy Lyashchuk in 2021. The gallery has previously showcased works by artists such as Anastasiia Leliuk, Dmytro Yaroshevskyi, Ola Chykalo, Lada Verbyna, Anton Tkachenko, Daniil Nemirovskyi, Olha Chekotkovska, and others.
«When you catch yourself thinking that you're forgetting, you imagine a map in your head. Loudly, in your imagination, you step with comfortable slippers on all familiar paths and bridges. You make a note in your big personal sketchbook: the number of steps, nail polish color, route, the direction of falling shadow, a garden plot, a lost toy under the entrance, and the voice of every cheerful person passing by. And it becomes easier because forgetting is scary now,» the artist writes in the event announcement.
Lecture about Lusia Ivanova as part of the ArtShelest Program
Dates: 25.08.2023
Address: Kyiv Oblast, Kyiv Reservoir Dam, towards Lebedivka village
Working Hours: 19:00
Ticket Price: —
Registration: Private messages on the Shelest Hotel Instagram
Organizer(s): Shelest Hotel, The Naked Room
Recently, SHELEST Hotel and The Naked Room gallery jointly established the ArtShelest program to showcase Ukrainian artists. The first exhibition within the program features paintings by artist Lusia Ivanova (operating from July 12 to August 27, 2023).
«Lusia's paintings are not related by a single theme or method. What unites them is perhaps the intricate fusion of what's acquired, seen, felt, and contemplated. In her art, Lusia herself cheekily defines her subject of interest as simply reality and its material signs and limits. She outlines the boundaries of her own everyday reality through depictions of simple objects, situations, glimpsed urban life episodes, interior of an apartment, and a studio. These everyday details dissolve in her semi-figurative canvases and become alluringly enigmatic,» say the curators in the exhibition announcement.
A lecture about Lusia's creative work will take place on August 25 at 19:00 (at the Shelest Hotel).
Ukrainian projects in Europe
Program of discussions Mental Geology of Nuclear Threat & The Labor of Witnessing
Dates: 25.08.2023
Address: transmediale e.V. Gerichtstr. 35 13347 Berlin
Working Hours: 18:00, 19:30
Organizer(s): transmediale
The program, organized by Asya Bazdyreva, a resident of the Transmediale 2023 festival, focuses on the production and dissemination of images and affects within the mediated contexts of climate change and war. The event consists of two moderated discussions:
18:00 — Mental Geology of Nuclear Threat. Participants: Elena Vogman and Olexii Kuchanskyi (moderator: Asya Bazdyreva).
«Drawing on Felix Guattari’s concept of “mental ecology” Elena Vogman and Olexii Kuchanskyi propose to investigate “mental geology” as a complex unconscious formation of the nuclear threat that navigates desire. Mental geology allows us to address the multilayered temporality of this process. Focusing on cases of mediatization of the Chornobyl accident and the recent occupation of Energodar, the presentation reflects in recourse to Guattari’s ecosophical project on the current geopolitical, media, and social conditions,» as described in the program.
19:30 — The Labor of Witnessing. Participants: Asya Bazdyreva and Svitlana Matviyenko (moderator: Johannes Bruder).
«Asia Bazdyrieva and Svitlana Matviyenko discuss the concept of 'labor of witnessing' to explore how individuals and non-human entities absorb, metabolize, and narrate complex realities of war amidst both slow and fast acts of violence. This labor is intricately tied to communication infrastructures within regimes of power, actively shaping terror environments and subjects through militarized communication techniques. Images are mobilized as instruments of formatting environments, territories, landscapes, subjectivities, and social relations, encompassing various acts of witnessing that a subject cannot escape,» as described in the program.
Exhibition You Will See This Light on the Sunniest Day by Katya Buchatska at Hunt Kasner, Prague
Dates: 20.07.2023 — 02.09.2023
Address: Praha (Czechia), Bořivojova 85, 130 00 3-Žižkov
Working Hours: Tue–Fri, 13:00–18:00, Sat, 14:00–18:00
Organizer(s): hunt kastner gallery
Co-organizer(s): The Naked Room
Katya Buchatska is a conceptual artist who combines means and methods within and beyond the traditional boundaries of the art world. She lives and works in Kyiv. Her eclectic works adhere to her moral compass, orienting themselves towards vulnerable and underrepresented aspects of the environment she resides in. Her mediums include sculptures, installations, films, prints, etc., which explore human and non-human relationships, remnants of the past, bodily vulnerability to violence, and possibilities arising from changing perspectives.
The exhibition in the Prague-based hunt kastner gallery presents:
— A reproduction of the painting «The Last Supper,» which hung in a rural house in southwestern Ukraine where Katya Buchatska was on February 24, 2022 (the day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine).
— The artist's reinterpretation of this painting and her experience.
«Betrayal has already begun, but crucifixion and resurrection are still ahead, and still under doubt. Everything changed at that moment, although it remained the same. The world is different, history is unfolding, but somewhere in another place... Buchatska is a witness to her own experience—a sleepless, anxious, boring normality of life that war does not stop—and makes its screaming, apocalyptic, potential energy visible. While the war continues, time is breaking down even more,» John Hill writes about the exhibition.
Warsaw Gallery Weekend (28.09/01.10) will present shows of Anna Zvyagintseva and Danylo Halkin
Dates: 28.09.2023 — 01.10.2023
Address: Warsaw (Poland), 34/50 Marszałkowska St.
Organizers: Warsaw Gallery Weekend, The Naked Room, Voloshyn Gallery
In 2023, Warsaw Gallery Weekend will feature two Ukrainian galleries: The Naked Room and Voloshyn Gallery. The former will present an untitled exhibition by Anna Zvyagintseva, while the latter will showcase the exhibition Optical Prostheses by Danilo Halkin.
Anna Zvyagintseva is an artist who often manifests the unnoticed, subtle aspects of our lives, demonstrating their fragility and documenting intangible moments. Her works have been exhibited at PinchukArtCentre and NMHU (Ukraine), Galeria Labirynt and Galeria Arsenał (Poland), Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe and Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig (Germany), and many other galleries.
Danilo Halkin is an artist who works with public space, exploring human life within a system of comprehensive control and oppression, as well as obstacles in the form of various traps of social injustice. He collaborates with state and communal art institutions, drawing attention to objects of Soviet heritage in Eastern Europe for their rethinking and museumification. He has represented Ukraine in Europe, America, East Asia, and the Middle East.
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