Permanent Revolution. Ukrainian Art Today

The first major presentation of the Ukrainian contemporary art scene in Hungary is a special occasion to look into the vibrant art of a country full of tensions, which is still largely in the blind spot of the European cultural area.

“Permanent Revolution” is an exhibition of Ukrainian contemporary art featuring the works of from several generations. It is the first large-scale presentation of contemporary Ukrainian art in Hungary and a rare occasion to explore an extremely vibrant art scene of the country which to a great degree still remains a blind spot on the cultural map of Europe.

In the last 30 years, Ukraine acquired state independence, confronted the phenomenon of oligarchic capitalism, and went through three waves of mass protests, two revolutions, a war in the country’s east, the annexation of Crimea, a neurotic and belated de-communization. Starting in the 1980s, we can speak of the formation of a new art in Ukraine, which broke radically with the practices of socialist realism and developed in sync with the international cultural process.

The generation of the late 1980s and early 1990s is probably the brightest phenomenon in Ukrainian art since the times of the avant-garde in the early twentieth century, squashed by the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. The transitory post-Soviet identity of the 1990s and early 2000s was gradually replaced by a rethinking of the political in art, raising the degree of comprehension of the social fabric and interest in activist practices. This coincided with a technological and network leap, forming a new generation of artists oriented on completely new meanings, audiences, and goals.

“Permanent Revolution” focuses on the question what is contemporary art today in a coordinate system where people build barricades on the country’s main square with startling regularity, with beauty and elemental conceptualism that the world’s best artists could envy.

Exhibiting artists: APL315, Piotr Armianovski, Sergey Bratkov, Anatoly Belov, Alexander Chekmenev, David Chichkan, Mitya Churikov, Zhanna Kadyrova, Gleb Katchuk and Olga Kashimbekova, Alevtina Kakhidze, Borys Kashapov, Alina Kleytman, Taras Kovach, Daria Koltsova, Maria Kulikovska, Yuri Leiderman and Igor Chatskin, Mykola Matsenko, Boris Mikhailov, Roman Minin, Roman Mikhaylov, Natsprom (Oleg Tistol and Mykola Matsenko), Yevgen Nikiforov, Open Group, Sergiy Petlyuk, Igor Petrof, Oleksiy Radinsky, Vlada Ralko, Stepan Riabchenko, Alexander Roytburd, Oleksiy Sai, Arsen Savadov, Nikita Shalenny, Szuper Gallery (Susanne Clausen and Pavlo Kerestey), Vasyl Tsagolov, Vova Vorotniov, Stas Volyazlovsky, Artem Volokitin.

Curators: Alisa Lozhkina, Julia Fabényi, Konstantin Akinsha

Assistant curator: Viktoria Popovics

The exhibition is organised in cooperation with Budapest Spring Festival. Prominent cooperative partner of the exhibition: Zenko Foundation