Voloshyn Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of its first location in the U.S. in the bustling Allapattah district of Miami. The inaugural exhibition, "No Grey Zones" running from October 7 to November 25, 2023, raises pivotal questions about the terminations of wars and the ambiguities that shadow them. The artworks combine documentary approach and a critique of international power politics with a goal to articulate genuine threats amidst complex geopolitical narratives. Harnessing varied compositional methods, notably the bird’s-eye perspective, the exhibition brings into focus the depleted territories that often turn into spaces for deliberate coercion after the endgame. The works on view emphasize the need to distinguish calculated aggression from the mystified terminology of the territories that “levitate between peace and war.”
The gallery's Miami venue emphasizes showcasing Ukrainian and Eastern European artists, while curating initiatives and discussions that promote engagement with their American colleagues. Artists showcased include Ádám Albert from Budapest, Bojan Stojčić from Sarajevo, K. Yoland operating between London and the U.S., Dana Levy, connecting Tel Aviv and New York, and Ukrainian artists Mykola Ridnyi, Lesia Khomenko, Nikita Kadan, and Oleksiy Sai.
Adam Albert's enigmatic construction in the gallery evokes the experience of injustice and its potential to turn metaphorical terror into aggression. Titled One Shot-Lose Yourself - Dream of Gavrilo Princip, the work grounds the narrative in the common knowledge speaking to a direct correlation between an individual agency and its potential to alter events on a historical scale.
Scenes from Bojan Stojčić’s Hotel Hope Phantom film in the gallery are symbolically bookended by the car rear view windows to reference the artist’s road trip to a hotel near the military base in Dayton, Ohio where the peace agreement ending Balkan Wars was signed in 1995 under the premise of the endorsement of regional balance.
The quiet interiors of Hotel Hope in the video are juxtaposed by Mykola Ridnyi’s concrete sculptures. Ridnyi’s scale models of Ukrainian bomb shelters sink the gaze to the underground level plumbing the idea of survival and resistance to terror.
In contrast to this, K. Yoland’s installation elevates the gaze to the point where a U.S. military village appears as an ornamental flat surface encrusted with the tiny dots and squares representing the buildings and sites where the artist visited and filmed. Laid on the floor, the carpet serves as a welcoming reading-zone within the exhibition where visitors can peruse newspapers on current affairs and books on borders, territory and surveillance.
Lesia Khomenko’s paintings based on the found military footage, Nikita Kadan’s drawings from Crater series, and Oleksiy Sai’s large scale mutilated aluminum panels from the Bombed series situate the viewer in a psychologically charged Ukrainian war zone landscape. These works serve as a representation of depleted lands, displaced communities, and the strenuous efforts that are required to defend one’s borders.
Dana Levy’s Erasing The Green project transports us to the border between pre-1967 Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Levy’s artistic research plumbs the idea of coercive statecrafts even further: her interviews with scholars highlight the fact that Israeli settlers are the only ones to benefit from the degradation of occupied Palestinian lands and the erasure of the notorious Green Line.
Set against the backdrop of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, “No Grey Zones” underscores the urgency to recognize the true instigators in geopolitical confrontations. Through this exhibit, the gallery beckons a definitive stand against moral ambiguity in statecraft and warfare, advocating for clarity and precision in discourse.
Exhibition is co-curated by Lilia Kudelia, Maksym and Julia Voloshyn.
Opening reception: Saturday 7 October, 6 – 9pm
No Grey Zones
October 7 - November 29, 2023
Voloshyn Gallery Miami
Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 5pm and by appointment
802 NW 22nd Street, Miami