Message to consciousness

Exhibition of posters on the fragile beauty of nature, threatened by consumer ignorance and human greed, symbolically opened in Kharkiv Municipal Gallery on first warm days of April. Environmental and social posters of one of the most famous and controversial artists of Germany Klaus Staeck were created mostly in the 1970s and the 1980s but still remain relevant.

Seventy-five-year-old artist was not able to attend the opening of the exhibition due to his illness. Artist Oleh Veklenko and poet Serhii Zhadan, who interviewed the author and compiled a Ukrainian catalog of his art works, saw in the piercing art pieces not only an impetus to discuss some pressing environmental, social, and political issues, but also an urge to act. Following the example of Staeck, who for more than 40 years was trying to change a system that is destroying the living planet. The system is changing gradually and we can see it in the impressive environmental achievements of Germany. It is a positive reference point for developing civil society in Ukraine. Besides, Zhadan believes that the art of the German artist can convince Ukrainian artists not to limit themselves to pure art, but to boldly and openly talk about the environmental, social, and political issues, building their own creative strategy and their existence in art.

Bird, dying in oil, tree chocking in the loops of concrete roads, heater in an aquarium, and cyclist under a massive car tire – each of these posters may be an illustration of the news reports in various places of our country. “These posters are quite powerful and impressive. But their place is not in an art gallery, where they would hang as artifacts, their place is in the streets. They can really impress in the real world as a response to real events,” said Veklenko, one of the leading masters of ecoposters making not only in Ukraine, but also in the world, president of the triennial “The Fourth Block.” He suggested to imagine how people’s thinking would change if overnight all the advertising posters and billboards of fashion boutiques and politicians would be replaces with these colorful evidence of destructive human activity.

“Poster is a special kind of art that is difficult to assess from an aesthetic or artistic point of view. It is a message to consciousness,” thinks the curator of the Municipal Gallery Tetiana Tumasian. According to her, the art of poster making loses its position and strength due to the abundance of advertising and distortion of meanings on the Internet, therefore, such exhibitions breathe new life into the genre.

One of the initiators of the exhibition, the director of the Goethe Institute in Ukraine Vera Bagaliantz convinced that in Ukraine there is an obvious growth in peaceful civilian activities related to the “green” issues. She considers the growing popularity of cycling to be a positive example of this. “Ukraine is interested in development of alternative energy sources and the subject of ecology is very popular in schools,” said Bagaliantz. “The changes in society come from down low and not from above. This is the way it happened in Germany and Ukraine will also succeed at this!”

A surprising fact has demonstrated that the art of poster making and environmental issues are of particular importance in Kharkiv. According to the artist Veklenko, the day before the opening of the exhibition, during the exposition installation, art gallery got a phone call from the Kharkiv City Council. The officials cautiously asked the organizers whether there are any posters about cutting the forest park. To the delight of the officials, the German artist has not yet heard of this problem. But Kharkiv artists now have a large-scale field for actions. And by field we mean a real empty space left after cutting the trees down.