Works of six artists of the gallery – Viktor and Sergiy Kochetov, Vladyslav Krasnoshchok, Sergiy Lebedynskyy, Sergiy Solonsky, Roman Pyatkovka – join the prestigious collection of the Centre Pompidou thanks to the donation of Ukrainian collectors.
Despite its authentic character, contemporary Ukrainian art still remains unfamiliar for a wider international audience. It’s only recently that it has started to appear regularly in the focus of large-scale exhibition and research projects. A major step towards the integration of the Ukrainian culture in the global context was undertaken by the Ukrainian Club of Contemporary Art Collectors, which proposed the donation of oeuvres by contemporary Ukrainian artists to the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The Grynov Collection, the Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography(MOKSOP), and other donators supported the initiative. The donated works will form the exhibition of the contemporary Ukrainian art in the Centre Pompidou planned for 2022.
The selection of the museum experts includes over 130 prints by the representatives of the Kharkiv School of Photography. The school is a unique phenomenon, which evolved in the late 1960s-2010s in Kharkiv, industrial and educational center on the East of Ukraine. Shaped by several generations of photographers, it’s noticeable for specific sensitivity towards experimenting and manipulating photographic image, subjective and acute reflection on social and political reality of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. One of the founders of the Kharkiv School of Photography, Boris Mikhailov, is a celebrated artist, who has a major impact on the photography of the recent decades.
Among the oeuvres donated to the Centre Pompidou, there are photographs of six artists represented in France by Alexandra de Viveiros Gallery:
There are panoramic shots by Viktor and Sergiy Kochetov, who are renowned for their hand-tinted prints with the ironic observations of the 1980s – 1990s daily life.
Works of Roman Pyatkovka related essentially with sexuality and female nudity triggering the discussion about private and public, sensual and tabooed in the society during Soviet and Post-Soviet periods.
Prints of Sergiy Solonsky who both masters manipulated photography in his grotesque collage images with mutated, surreal personages, and straight photography that captures life of characters that are marginalized, portraying the outcomes of the turbulent transformations of the 1990s in Ukraine.
Several series of photographs by the Shilo group (Sergiy Lebedynskyy, Vladyslav Krasnoshchok, Vadym Trykoz) navigate between documentality and staginess; they represent piercing social commentaries, translated through the various techniques of transforming images and performative gestures.
Together with the works of Oleg Maliovany, Evgeniy Pavlov, Jury Rupin and Oleksandr Suprun, other artists form the Kharkiv School of Photography, this unique collection would give the visitors of the institution an insight into full-blooded, transgressive and deeply subjective approaches of the local photographic community.
The artists thank the Centre Pompidou, and particularly Bernard Blistène, Nicolas Liucci, Goutnikov Helena Brockmeier, Sylvia Lamour and Kateryna Liashevska for the high estimation given to their work. They are honored to become part of the prestigious collection of the museum.
