Dust and art
The Art-Kyiv contemporary international fair opened as part of the Art Arsenal presentation week
The 5th international fair Art Kyiv Contemporary has a tight schedule. One of the most interesting elements is a special street art and media art project. Among the festival guests is Harald Naegeli, the patriarch of street art and the legendary “Sprayer of Zurich,” whose graffiti more than once caused scandals in conservative Switzerland and Germany.
No less interesting are works of the other foreign street artists, such as Zevs (France), Incubus Project and Spy (Russia). Ukraine is represented by the street artists Homer, Vova Vorotnikov, and Apl 315, as well as new-generation gallery artists Zhanna Kadyrova, Hamlet Zinlovsky, Anatolii Belov, Volodymyr Kuznetsov, Mykyta Kadan, and Gruppa Predmetiv. The famous German art duo Molitor&Kuzmin (Ursula Molitor and Vladimir Kuzmin) are implementing an original light installation pro-ject at Art Arsenal. They built an unconventional neon-lamp structure that symbolizes birth and purity.
Another star attraction of the fair was the performance by German experimenter Rochus Aust.
The second key element of this year’s Art Kyiv Contemporary is an international video art project. Among the authors is the group Provmyza from Nizhny Novgorod, a prize winner at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Asolo International Festival of Art Films, as well as a participant in the 51st Venice Biennale and the 67th Venice Film Festival. Ukrainian media art is represented by the groups REP and SOSka, as well as the artists Lada Nakonechna and Stanislav Voliazlovsky.
As the festival was opening, visitors could also take part in the presentation of the kinetic sculpture Performance, by the Swiss art duet Daniel Glazer and Magdalena Kunz. They also displayed some unique media installations and “talkative” kinetic sculptures.
Art Kyiv Contemporary also arranged a public screening of Exit through the Gift Shop, a film on street art by the famous graffiti artist Banksy. The Kyiv movie buffs who failed to see this film at the Molodist festival can do so here.
The Arsenal also provided a vast space for the galleries of Kyiv, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, Paris, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Lviv. It is noticeable that the Art Arsenal director Natalia Zabolotna has brought exposition formats from her previous place of work into the new space. Art Kyiv Contemporary has been held in Ukrainian Home in the past four years, it is now planned to hold the Grand Antique Salon in December 2010, and the Grand Sculptural Salon in March 2011. In April 2011 it will see the Fine Art Ukraine festival and the Ukrainian Fashion Week. All this has taken place in Ukrainian Home, of which Zabolotna has been the director in the past few years. The skill of arranging multi-genre salons was what allowed her to fill the Arsenal interiors effectively and at times strikingly. As for the rest, the progress is less evident, but this depends not so much on a specific director as on the governmental officials who approve the funding of the “Ukrainian Louvre.”
Although Arsenal finally has a water supply and toilets, there is little overall progress so far. It is still cold inside the premises, and the interior still creates the impression of a dusty ruin. Of course, it took 20 years to establish the famous Viennese museum quarter, but, to meet even this deadline, one must begin serious and publicly transparent work right now.
In any case, it is gratifying that Art Arsenal is beginning to work in an active exhibition mode, featuring as one of the top places on Kyiv’s cultural map.
