MOHRYTSIA 2007/ Soviart Contemporary Art Center, Kyiv
In the spring of 2008, the Soviart Centre gallery in Kyiv hosted the report exhibition “Borderland Space” for 2007, at the invitation of Viktor Khamatov, head of the Association of Art Galleries of Ukraine.
The year 2007 was marked by a deepening of the participants’ work in the land art symposium with performative and sculptural forms, which were increasingly combined. For the artists, the creation of collective objects in the gallery space became an organic continuation of this interaction. These works resonated with those created in the landscape, seeming to extend acts of engagement with space, material, and time, while simultaneously acquiring a self-sufficient artistic presence.
The centrepiece of the exhibition was “The Tower,” made of sticks wrapped in canvas and fireclay. A long row, constructed on the same principle, like an aerial bridge, crossed the main hall of the gallery. These two installations recounted the principal events of the 2007 symposium. Nadiia Bilokur’s work “Metamorphoses” conveyed the mood of mystery and the enchantment of the Mohrytsia nights.
Oleksii Kravtsov and Volodymyr Tsiupka created a series of ceramic fragments specifically for the exhibition, on which ancient symbols were inscribed, reminiscent of those on the symposium flags that flutter annually in the landscape during the artists’ work. These fragments seemed as if brought straight from the hearth after firing, the same one that traditionally concluded the symposium.
The exhibition as a whole also presented cycles of photographic documentation of the events that had taken place during the 2007 Borderland Space symposium.
Curators: Ganna Gidora, Natalia Kokhan, Viktor Khamatov
