This year, the festival was held under the motto: "This is not a competition." "We emphasize the need for innovative reforms. The theme This Is Not A Competition informs about the beginning of a dialogue with equal positions of the parties", - this is how the organizers deciphered their manifesto. As a result, it was not just a dialogue, but a heated discussion about art as a factor in the transformation of the architecture of society and urban spaces.
"Portrait with closed eyes" - Dmitry Grek. Kiev Art Fair 2019.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
"Mechanical Orange" - Alexey Zolotarev. Kiev Art Fair 2019.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
The Kyiv Art Fair was the main event of the fest - here the maximum density of works of art per square meter was off the charts. On two floors of the business center "Toronto-Kyiv" there were exhibitions of 38 galleries - both Ukrainian and foreign, and the total number of art objects presented at the fair exceeded one thousand.
Gallerists from Copenhagen, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, San Francisco, Vilnius, who took part in the Kyiv Art Fair, are not random "good sellers" at the Kyiv cultural festival. According to Evgeny Bereznytskyi, the curator of Kyiv Art Week, some of the galleries, being foreign, cooperate with Ukrainian artists. They promote our art abroad and are recognized in some way as partners of Ukraine, its cultural ambassadors.
Photo exhibition within the framework of the Footnote 11 project at the Vladimir market, Kyiv. Kyiv Art Week 2019 festival. Photo: Iryna Isachenko PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
For art dealers and connoisseurs of art and partly object design, Kyiv Art Fair has become a real Klondike, and for artists - a powerful tool for promoting creative works, concepts and ideas.
One of the obvious trends of Kyiv Art Week 2019 is the orientation of the festival participants to the active search for new meanings and a new place for art objects in space, both internal and external. A number of expositions and lectures were directly or indirectly devoted to architecture, urban planning and public art (we devoted an analytical article to the latter "Take a photo! Selfies-architecture and art in public space").
Exhibition "Inventory", Center of Contemporary Art "Hlebzavod", Kyiv, Kiev Art Fair 2019.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
Yevgeny Karas is a collector, art expert, founder of Karas Gallery at the Kiev Art Fair 2019.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
For example, the Footnote 11 project of curators Barbara Pivovarskaya and Guillaume Rollo in the Vladimir market was devoted to the typology of such structures. The photo exhibitions were placed directly on the walls in the meat row, and the installations were placed on the counters. Thus, the curators wanted to clarify the potential of utilitarian market architecture as an exhibition space.
"Every time the Footnote project has a new theme and a new location. Previously, it was held at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris and in Vienna, at the MUMOK gallery. The project has very serious curators who travel around the world and integrate art into the local context. The integration of art into the market space is an interesting anthropological experience," says Yevgeny Bereznytskyi.
"Soon today" - installation by Mikhail Alekseenko, exposition of Invogue#ART Gallery, Odessa. Kiev Art Fair 2019. Photo: Yuriy Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
In addition to the exhibition, three lectures were held at Vladimirskyi - devoted to architecture, functionality and new scenarios for the use of giant covered markets, which we inherited from the Soviet modernist architects.
Trend: search for new meanings and a new place for art objects in space, such as internal,
and externally
Lecturers Aleksey Bykov, Evgeniya Gubkina, Kirill Lipatov, Alexander Burlaka discussed archetypes in the architecture of covered markets, its transformation in the era of modernism and the phenomenon of the Soviet period, when the very essence of the market as a space of free trade was perverted, and Soviet markets functioned as a territory of selective supply of a small solvent elite.
Exposition "Exercises", Aleksey Zolotarev, Center of Contemporary Art M17, Kyiv.
Kiev Art Fair 2019.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
Exhibition Invogue#ART Gallery, Odessa. Kiev Art Fair 2019.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
In the Taras Shevchenko National Museum, sculptor Vladimir Sai presented the conceptual project "ZhK". Ceramic human figures, "packed" in narrow wooden cells of a panel cabinet, symbolic "rooms" are a metaphorical illustration of how much the everyday context and social norms influence a modern person, making him a hostage of a narrow living space and too narrow a morality.
An even more direct connection with architecture is a video projection by artists Vladimir Gulych and Anastasia Loyko on the facade of the Gothic church of St. Nicholas, which was broadcast during the grand opening of the Kyiv Art Fair. The light show was part of the collective interactive project "BIRUCHIY 018 or NEOSHAMANISM. THE POWER OF RITUAL."
Roman Minin and his bas-relief "Find Strangers", exhibition Abramovych Gallery, Kharkiv-Kyiv. Kiev Art Fair 2019.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
Exposition MASLO gallery, Khmelnytskyi. Kiev Art Fair 2019.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
Well, the last event that completed the program of the Kyiv Art Week 2019 festival of contemporary art was a party devoted to the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus school of architecture. We also devoted a series of articles to this topic (read in this volume "Women and Bauhaus"). Symbolic, isn't it?
Reforming the space
May, Kyiv, M17
How do geopolitical, cultural and social changes affect the territory of cities, metaphysical and personal space, and can public art become a catalyst for change? Artistic studies of Ukrainian sculptors Nazar Bylyk, Alexey Zolotarev, Sergey Petlyuk and the famous Catalan sculptor Jaume Plensa, who is among the TOP-30 sculptors of the world and leading experts in the field of sculpture and architecture, united by the project Reforming the space, which was initiated by the Center of Contemporary Art M17 and Adamovsky Foundation.
"We want to harmonize the interaction of public space and sculpture," said Natalya Shpytkovskaya, director of the M17 Center for Contemporary Art, the concept of the sculpture project Reforming the space.
"Roza Vetrov", Alexey Zolotarev. Metal. M17. Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
The spherical sculpture "Space around" by Nazar Bylyk is focused on the image of a man, but his outlines dissolve in a snow-white spherical shape, creating a game of shadows and contrasts.
The installation "Scanning an Indeterminate Space" by Sergey Petlyuk offers to explore the environment through anthropomorphic projections on architecture and natural objects. It is people, according to the artist, who form the modern landscape, which leaves traces in our memory.
"Ear", Alexey Zolotarev. Metal. M17. Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
"Ear" by Alexey Zolotorev made of rusted steel is a part of the future large-scale self-portrait, an illustration of the modern need to isolate the main and essential from the white informational noise that fills the space around us.
"Dreams of Julia" by Jaume Plensa is an offer to look into the future with closed eyes, through meditative experiences and dreams. The Private dreams series is one of the main works of the artist.
"Space around", Nazar Bylyk. Polymer resins, metal, paint. M17. Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIC. MEDIA
We want to harmonize the interaction of public space and sculpture
"New World", Danyl Shumykhin. Sculptural installation and photo. M17. Photo: Yury Ferendovych | PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
"Scanning of an indeterminate space", Sergey Petlyuk. Video installation. M17.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
The unification of styles at the level of form exists, but the main thing remains the search for a comprehensive statement
Elena Saponova. Photo. M17.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
Model No. 5, Ilya Novgorodov. Metal. M17.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
Model No. 5, Ilya Novgorodov. Metal. M17.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
"Protivostoyanie", Petr Gronsky. Concrete, steel, polymers. M17.
Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
"Dreams of Julia" by Jaume Plensa. Bronze, paint. M17. Photo: Yury Ferendovych PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA
Sculpture in the context of architecture will always be a poetic refuge
