Looking into the Gaps

Voloshyn Gallery presents the group project "Looking into the Gaps". The exhibition is curated by Nikita Kadan.

‘We generally didn't like to look into the distance. Rather, to the side, into the gap. Like the perspective of pretty streets that always diverge perpendicularly. We didn't interpret, we didn't even ‘practice’, we just wandered around.’

— Yuri Leiderman, “Those Who Wandered in the Surf”

The history of Ukrainian art is a torn history and, at the same time, a history of gaps. Interrupted narratives, destroyed works, repressed authors, loud silence, rewriting the past according to the new dominant ideology, tragedies of conformism and virtuosity of self-justification, breaking oneself over the knee, changing sides in the middle of an argument, changing names halfway through, dissociative identity. Or martyrdom through self-immolation, followed by turning the ashes into bronze. And bronze is known to steal the meaning from ashes every time.

Is it possible to wander the landscape of catastrophe? Are there flankers in the bloody lands? The answer to this exhibition is affirmative.

The dignity of living on the periphery, without an eager gaze directed to the centre, to the metropolis. The lack of any certainty about one's own historical prospects. Leiderman speaks of ‘Ukrainian horizontal kinship, non-hierarchical ties’ and ‘a number of cultural provinces - Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Kharkiv - that do not need a centre, they just stand side by side’**. Art in the provinces can be ‘elusive Joe’ while in the metropolis it turns into career springboards or monumental columns and towers of ‘big culture’.

But the province is also the cradle of madness. Ideas that in more central places could turn into unshakable pedestals for their creators here become the clamorous garb of a urban madmen. Something like Tetianych's spacesuits made of garbage and foil.

Let's imagine a museum, one of the Ukrainian museums, where a seemingly chaotic collection of artworks turns into a clear history of gaps of the logics that could otherwise unite and historicise these works. Where the lack of connection between historical situations makes the present fluid, unreliable and extremely open.

What to do when your native periphery suddenly becomes a place where the fate of the world is decided? And an even more complicated question: what if it suddenly ceases to be this place?

This exhibition is about the ways of looking at art, determined by the terrific and funny circumstances of Ukrainian life. This exhibition can be read as a project of a museum in which the desire to claim power through writing history has already failed. Or as an unstable system in which “classical," “contemporary," “marginal," "popular" authors find themselves outside their usual niches and positions in the classification. Like a moving landscape of art that instantly makes any map obsolete. Or as a story about the stolen past, recreated by its shadows and echoes - with full readiness for these shadows and echoes to deceive you and lead you astray.

Curatorial text

Participants of the exhibition: Kateryna Aliinyk, Serhii Anufriev, Yevgenia Belorusets, Andriy Boyarov, Davyd Burliuk, Dasha Chechushkova, Yaroslav Futymskyi, Oleg Holosiy, Konstantyn-Vadym Ignatov, Nikita Kadan, Katya Kopeikina, Vlodko Kostyrko, Yuri Leiderman, Kateryna Lysovenko, Krystyna Melnyk, Maya Nikolaieva, Oleg Parfionov (Parfion), Maria Prymachenko, Vlada Ralko, Olena Ryzhuk, Anton Saenko, Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, Tiberiy Szilvashi, Bohdan Sokur, Fedir Tetianych, Illia Todurkin, Tetyana Yablonska, Ola Yeriemieieva, Florian Yuriev, Unknown artist, Unknown artist.

Opening: Saturday, June 1st, from 18:00 to 20:00.

01.06–07.07.2024

Voloshyn Gallery

13 Tereshchenkivska St., Kyiv

For all press enquiries please contact: info@voloshyngallery.art