Orange revolution for export

Ukrainian viewers got to know these works in December 2004, when the Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv staged an exhibit in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution (as reported in The Day). The display in Chicago is only part of a large-scale project in which various art actions played an important role.

Our hushed respect for everything foreign, which we have maintained since the Soviet period, has only strengthened the cliche “an exhibit overseas means the artist is good.” As for what kind of exhibit it was, whether viewers visited it, whether it was covered well by the foreign press — all these nuances somehow pale into insignificance. It often happens that no one knows about a certain gallery; it has no name, no weight, and belongs to “our people,” that is yesterday’s emigrants. But the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago is something entirely different. Unlike fly-by-night galleries, this institute has held exhibits by celebrated Ukrainian artists, who made their names in Europe and the United States and took part in resonant alternative projects, and whose works are displayed not only in private galleries but museums of modern art and at prestigious international biennales.

Today, somewhat belatedly, residents of the Ukrainian Village in northwestern Chicago, a 15-minute drive from the city center of towering skyscrapers, can familiarize themselves with the art born of the revolution. Kyiv and Chicago have been Sister Cities since Soviet times, so our exhibits in the halls of the UIMA and the Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago have long since become part of a large international cultural program. With its rich cultural funds the exhibit illustrates the Ukrainian re-election of 2004 from the perspective of art, as seen by the direct participants of the revolution, young artists. Without a doubt an exhibit by young artists (not 30-40 year-olds) of the R.E.P. Group (acronym of Revoliutsiino-Eksperymentalnyi Prostir, or Revolutionary Experimental Space) is a breakthrough, as in the past individual exhibits have been held from time to time for a narrow circle of colleagues.

It is another question how this exhibit at the Chicago institute, with its broad range of genres, artists, and quality, will give the American viewer an idea about the Orange Revolution in general and contemporary Ukrainian art in particular. Journalists have often written that exhibits by the R.E.P. Group, which quickly rose to prominence on the crest of the political wave, are not always interesting from the standpoint of creativity. They give the impression of hastily prepared projects, references to well known conceptual discoveries of the past century, and playing around with post-Soviet cliches.

There are also works that clearly do not belong in the exhibit, like Artur Bilozerov’s “Victory,” a work that hints either at the conditional nature of the victory, when one year after the revolution confidence among the president’s supporters has split into TAK! and NE TAK! (SIC ET NON, like the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras once wrote), or simply the artist’s style whose paintings could be successfully submitted to any other exhibit, regardless of the theme.

Oleksandr Semenov’s installation “Crowd,” featuring dirty mattresses from the Maidan, hastily rolled and bound with electrician’s tape, is a bit of an obtuse metaphor of pandemonium and leaves one with the impression of short-lived pseudocreativity. Political topicality does not rule out aesthetics. An object found on the street is not necessarily a happy discovery for art; it reflects not so much reality as the thinking and psychological type of an artist whose paintings are daubed by rivers of dirty glaze coatings and have not been displayed anywhere for a long time except in a rather paradoxical place, the former Young Pioneers’ Palace.

At the same time, the very heterogeneity of the artists from the R.E.P. Group allows us to single out works by individual artists. The ironic nature of two excellent acrylic paintings by Ksenia Hnylytska, “Altar,” complete with Ukrainian fatback and a loaf of bread, and the embroidery “Vyhrai mene!” (the title in English sounds even better: “Take Me!”), is proof that the younger generation is not that neutral, despite the accusations of some Ukrainian media. On the contrary, irony has its own view and this is always an artist’s salvation; once s/he stops being an aloof marginalist, a happy period of sensible and individual creativity begins.

Feeble, pseudoabstract, almost anonymous paintings based on the “strangers passing in the night” principle hardly catches anyone’s eye these days. However, neither Hnylytska nor Zhanna Kadyrova (creator of the “Diamonds” project recently displayed at the Center for Contemporary Art) displays any such sluggishness. As symbols, Kadyrova’s orange-and-blue “Compass” and “Stadium” — Zhanna Kadyrova’s Testing Ground are somewhat aggressive but at the same time very significant; her paintings are juicy and rough, and thus perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the revolution.

In “Unity” Viktor Kharkevych has created easily recognizable portraits of his fellow citizens, despite the Rembrandt-like key. Lesia Khomenko also depicts columns of Maidan activists. There is no doubt that in time the commercial value of these pictures now in private collections will increase in geometric progression.

The intellectual, refined, and very solid Mykyta Kadan is a phenomenon of the R.E.P. Group, proving that a thinking artist is always something more than a simple artist. And if he is also capable of being an organizer and ideologue of a movement, he is guaranteed an Olympian future. By submitting his artist’s clothing to the exhibit, including a robe with beautiful colored stripes, and adding text to this installation, Kadan has launched a bold, new era in the interpretation of the Orange Revolution.

A broader look at the activity of the one-year-old R.E.P. Group reveals that among its members’ best projects is a resonant work entitled “Ukrainian Hermitage,” a creative effort to find the weighty equivalent of the “raw meat of reality.” Unfortunately, the exhibit “Ukrainian Artists and the Orange Revolution” lacks serious professional preparation. They have ignored such a factor as basic “manpower” filtration, which is by no means the least important in collective creativity.

From time to time the Kyiv artistic milieu has given rise to its own art groups, like the perestroika- era Pohliad, Zhyvopysnyi Zapovidnyk, and Paryzka Komuna, and every time the artists had their own reasons for uniting. Most of the 17 members of the R.E.P. Group joined blind, on the level of a rave, as Kostiantyn Doroshenko noted correctly. Only a few R.E.P. activists are genuine creators, without an iota of irony so often present in this word.

Considering that at one time the level of our Ukrainian art attracted the attentions of art collector Prince Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky, historian of avant-garde art Jean-Claude Marcade, millionaire George Soros, and a number of others, it makes sense not to drop standard but maintain it on this level. After all, it is a good thing that the younger generation now has an opportunity to act independently within the framework of international projects. The Venice Biennale is just around the corner.