Between Fire and Fire. Ukrainian Art Now

21.09.2019 - 08.10.2019

Atelierhaus der Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien, Wien / Österreich

A project by the curators Konstantin Akinsha and Alisa Lozhkina will open on September 20, 2019 at the Semperdepot Gallery at the Austrian Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The exhibition will be open until October 8, 2019. The project was organized by the Ukrainian Institute in cooperation with Zenko Gallery. The event is part of the Bilateral Ukrainian-Austrian Culture Year 2019.
The focus of the large-scale exhibition "Between fire and fire. Ukrainian Art Now" is the latest Ukrainian art of the past five years, reflecting on transformations in a country that is going through a difficult and at the same time extremely exciting stage of history.... For the Viennese audience, this
will be a kind of continuation of the discussion about Ukrainian art as a reflection of the times of change in Ukraine, initiated by the curatorial duo of Alisa Lozhkina and Konstantin Akinsha four years ago with
the exhibition "I am a Drop in the Ocean. The Art of the
Ukrainian Revolution."

"In the Between Fire and Fire project, we are trying to create a space of dialogue, combining works of contemporary Ukrainian artists, photographs from youth raves, documentation of the Revolution of Dignity events and the Soviet era war monuments. It is this seemingly paradoxical
and incompatible polyphony that suddenly turns out to be perhaps the most relevant way of talking about the atmosphere in the contemporary Ukrainian art and
society in general," noted Alisa Lozhkina, writer and curator of the Between Fire and Fire exhibition.

The title of the exhibition refers to a quote from a collection of works by William Blake. These works were written during the French Revolution, which brought many hopes and
disappointments. The Ukraine of today, as seen through
the eyes of young artists, is literally between fires.
In a broad sense, it is a metaphor for all the many trials
that Ukraine has faced over the last 100 years.

"For the Ukrainian Institute, the numerous voices of this exhibition and the freedom of curatorial and creative work are important. The exhibition reveals the broader historical,
political and cultural context from which contemporary Ukrainian art emerges. "Between Fire and Fire" is not only
an artistic expression, but also an invitation to a dialogue in which the language of visual culture requires no translation," said Volodymyr Sheiko, Director General
of the Ukrainian Institute.

Artists participating at the exhibition: Gera Artemova, Yuriy Bolsa, Vova Vorotniov, Zina Isupova, Maria Kulikovska, Sasha Kurmaz, Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Himey, Anton Malynovskyi, Sergiy Melnitchenko, Roman Mikhaylov, Yevgen Nikiforov, Igor Petrof, Yuri Pikul, Alexander Sovtysik, Yaroslav Solop, Elena Subach, Vyacheslav Teshner, Oleksandr Chekmenev, David Chichkan, Nikita Shalenny, Kinder Album.

The project will also showcase the monumental haut-reliefs of the Soviet era - "The Tankist", "The Gunner", "The Sailor", "The Infantryman", and "The Pilot". The objects were created
by a team of authors in 1970 to decorate a thirty-meter pylon, which was a part of the sculptural ensemble of the Monument of Battle Glory of the USSR Armed Forces in Lviv in Stryiska street. The haut-reliefs were dismantled in the spring of 2019 and donated to the Territory of Terror
Memorial Museum of Totalitarian Regimes (Lviv, Ukraine).

A special event of the exhibition opening will be the demonstration of "The Bridge" - a large-scale multimedia installation by Nikita Shalenny.

The entrance to the exhibition is free. The exhibition will be open from September 21 to October 8, 2019 in Vienna (address: Lehargasse 6, Semperdepot Atelierhaus der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien).

[Quelle: https://web.archive.org/web/20191211152505/http://ui.org.ua/btwfires-en]