Documenta 2003 sounds almost as impressive as the Kassel Documenta Art Show, a most prestigious exposition of contemporary art held once every four years in Germany. The concept of the current exhibit, initiated and supervised by Regina Helwig-Schmit, is also long-term, meant for ten years, so that cultural attainments of a given country can be displayed in the fall of every year in Regensburg, a small city on the Danube. Last year, it featured Yugoslavia, in keeping with the code of political ethics. Now it is Ukraine’s turn.
For the next decade the residents of Regensburg will be able to acquaint themselves with the art of Moldova, Bulgaria, Austria, Romania, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, and finally Serbia (2011). Another task the organizers set themselves is establishing a network for new contacts between cultural organizations and individual authors.
Regensburg is a remarkably scenic ancient town where the Romanesque rubs elbows with baroque and classicism. It is kept spotlessly clean by the populace, looking like a huge beautiful stage setting. The environs have their effect on the cultural project, creating a very special homey atmosphere for the participants. The main group exposition is accommodated by the historic salt warehouse, near the tower of the famous twelfth century Stone Bridge.
The annual festival program is large-scale, including presentations of visual arts, music, literature, dance, drama, cinema, and historical prospects. This time we will touch on contemporary art.
POLITICAL ETHICS: NOT ALWAYS GOOD FOR ART QUALITY
Ukraine’s contemporary visual arts represented several generations of painters, ranging from noted veterans of the “first wave” to rookies, embracing a period from the 1990s to the present.
Idea is the most important thing for the contemporary artist, with the form and genre serving as the means rather than the end. Ukrainian art is currently on the multimedia side and it would be hard to mention an author using just his brushes or photo/video cameras. Thus the large group exposition of Ukrainian artists included all contemporary genres — video, performance, photography, canvases, installations — and the authors represented major Ukrainian cultural centers: Maksym Mamsykov, Illia Chychkan, Illia Isupov, Ivan Tsypka, Vlada Ralko, Natalia Holibroda, Oksana Chepelyk, and Solomiya Svachuk of Kyiv; Antonina Denysiuk, Olena Turianska, and Natalka Shymin of Lviv; Dmytro Dulfan, Olha Kashymbekova, and Hlib Katchuk of Odesa.
The visual arts as part of national culture would seem to be connected with the nation’s political and economic process. However, a number of Ukrainian authors do not appear strongly attracted to sociopolitical subjects and the exposition in Regensburg vividly illustrated the trend.
The works of art were selected by German curators, thoroughly cleaning up Ukrainian art which is not overly radical, depriving the presentation of all sharp angles and provocative approaches. Indeed, their stand contradicts the habitual stereotype that the West expects from us: things risquО reflecting our violent, oversexed, and otherwise horrifyingly exotic realities. Even though the exposition boasted a number or really good works, the overall impression was emphatically decorative, lacking any spark of originality. Incidentally, no works by Serhiy Bratkov and Arsen Savadov were displayed, rejected as too socially oriented. Also, political ethics were the main feature of the project and this by no means served to improve its artistic quality. When the emphasis is on the numerical ratio of artists in terms of sex or regional belonging, the result is a collective of various works being in the same space, rather than a single project.
Moreover, the historically unique premises turned out difficult to accommodate an art show; the visitors’ attention was drawn to the broad wooden beams cracked with time, as though they were the key structural element. Thus the small delicate works of art by Vlada Rybalko and Maksym Mamsykov were lost among the architectural details. Mainly large installations looked good, especially Antonina Denysiuk’s In Paradise. A leather couch, armchairs, and a coffee table painted white-sky-blue, portraying the sky and clouds, and a colorful canvas above the couch with trees in blossom against the blue sky. The artist had only three days to build the installation, so the twigs with spring flowers freshly oil-painted on the couch were still wet. One of the visitors walked up too close and then just sat on the couch, ruining his suit.
MUSICALITY, THE MAIN FEATURE OF UKRAINIAN VIDEO WORKS
The Ukrainian video program in Regensburg deserved special notice. It was prepared by the Kyiv curator, Natalia Manzhaliy. A collection of recent best works graphically demonstrated musicality as the main characteristic of contemporary Ukrainian video art. One ought to mention in particular works by Illia Chychkan, Hlib Katchuk, Olha Kashymbekova, Ivan Tsiupka, and Hanna Artemenko. Music videos have of late become a very popular format as laconic and complete forms of the video product. The videos envisions a compressed plot (or even its absence), a strictly defined timeframe: one song and musical accompaniment, the so- called sound. The form of the music is instantly associated with all kinds of the entertainment industry: MTV, DJ and VJ culture, karaoke, or disk space. This form is so attractive to the contemporary artist because it combines all the visual capacities of contemporary art with the entertainment elements of masscult. Interestingly, while even the form of the music video is not utilized, most works incorporate music as one of their main creative components.
Another multimedia group exposition of three noted artists Oleksandr Hnylytsky, Oleksandr Roitburd, and Andriy Sahaidakovsky, accommodated by the East German Gallery Museum turned out truly amazing. An important role was undoubtedly played by the space, a real “white club” craved by every Ukrainian artist unspoiled by museum halls, so spacious, with overhead lighting. A beautiful exposition, although a bit overburdened here and there, neighboring with a standing collection that looked very fine for a provincial museum, including works by Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter. And so Andriy Sahaidakovsky’s rudely sensual carpet patterns seemed a very apt addition. In fact, his archaically straightforward, overstated, even distorted forms apparently had something in common with German expressionists.
THE BORROWING STRATEGY
Oleksandr Hnylytsky submitted a new pictorial series titled Clothes, using versatile forms of advertising products — journals, brochures from clothing and footwear stores — for colorful appropriations. This borrowing strategy is regarded by the artist as a professional exercise in the fine arts. His anthropomorphic portraits of suits and dresses that do not seem to require models to display them, endless rows of sneakers varying in form, blocks of fashionable shirts and ties prove that practically everything can be turned into good pictorial art. Another absurd idea of the project had it that, should life- size samples of expensive clothes be recreated on canvas, they would sell at the same, if not higher, price. Hnylytsky reaffirmed his reputation as an artist-magician by sculptures from the Anamorphoses and Zootropes series. The latter is a recent one, whose principle consists in a magnified mechanical implementation of the precinematographic effect, creating a moving object. The work is interactive, meaning that its perception requires the viewer’s participation. Visitors of the museum had to spin a cylindrical drum with small equally sized canvases attached to the opposite side within, portraying female thighs in various phases of motion. As a reward for this physical exercise, the viewer could see the thighs swaying as when walking. Here the pictorial art was applied as a primitive animated cartoon. Several years ago, when this work was first displayed at the National Artists’ Union, as part of the Oleksandr Soloviov’s curator project, Natalia Isupova, an advertising expert, correctly pointed out, “Why bother building such a complex construction when any woman can easily produce the same effect any time?” And so one can rightfully refer to Hnylytsky as an absurd sculptor.
A whole wall was occupied by Oleksandr Roitburd’s prints. One of them, titled Daily Life in Pompeii, is well known to the Kyiv public. In that cycle the artist, inspired by historical frescoes, portrays phantoms from the past transformed by the distorting mirrors of modern aesthetics. The artist lets in sensuality through the filters of posthumanistic ideology, inventing new sexual models and erogenous zones kept in the style of historical-erotic mannerism, creating hallucinatory scenes with chimerically transformed bodies. His characters display postexistent sensuality and their communication shows a variety of fictitious mechanisms of love and death. However, everything looks not too horrifying because the figures are devoid of the solidity of flesh, they are weightless and remind one of decorative marionettes.
DOMESTIC REALITIES THROUGH GERMAN EYES
A group of staff members of the local university organized an exhibit at that same museum, illustrating everyday life in Ukraine. Ukrainian realities seen through German eyes occupied an entire museum hall. Its objective was formulated as a quest for cultural identity, yet there were works of art. University professors single-handedly built whole installations, using various ready Ukrainian objects, a row of street market stalls displaying merchandise from Andriyivsky uzviz, a boxing ring with two figures supposed to portray the Klychko brothers and a poster with them drinking Ukrainian beer, round kiosks (no longer found on Ukrainian streets) plastered all over with fresh posters.
A reproduction of a Ukrainian suburban courtyard and a standard Ukrainian family kitchen with the wrong kind of stove and GDR- made furniture dating from the 1960s, and a portrait of Taras Shevchenko decorated with rushnyk embroidered towels, looked rather unconvincing to Ukrainian visitors. In that ready-made realm the most amazing items on display were two sleeping cats, one behind the counter and the other in the suburban yard, both rolled in a ball. They looked very much alive, except for their postures and unnaturally long sleep. Besides, a cat in a German museum would be unthinkable. In fact, we did not see a single stray cat on any German street, although we did see a staircase made specially for cats, leading from the second floor. Therefore, the stuffed cats at the museum were obviously added as an extra element of the Ukrainian reality.
Seven main topics were singled out in an article about the exhibit in Germany which, in the authors’ opinion, offer an idea about contemporary Ukraine, and which the exposition was meant to illustrate. Among those topics were the controversy of the Ukrainian national symbols, construction of new churches, and manifestations of various religious affiliations. Chornobyl, of course, was not ignored, along with the Klychko brothers, Andriy Shevchenko, AN- 225 aircraft, Shvydko Crimean champagne, and Ukrainian borsch. Characteristically, apart from music (bandura and lute), Hutsul punk, and Ukrainian rock, the list actually lacked culture as such and attendant names.
An exposition of documentary photos by Oleksandr Hliadelov and Viktor Marushchenko, titled Chornobyl, left unforgettable impressions. Pictures showing Chornobyl refugees, never seen before yet painfully familiar, deserted and boarded up homes, abandoned cattle were displayed at the Church of St. Oswald, of all places. Long rows of black-and-white photos of uniform size were a sudden and interesting contrast to the refined gilded interior dОcor. Yet the truly surrealistic effect was produced by Ukrainian folk songs. After all, one did often hear the popular Moonlit Night under gothic vaults.
Summing up a review of the exhibition program, it should be noted that the youngest participant in the Ukrainian festival in Germany was Kseniya Hnylytska, a student with the National Art Academy. Her personal art show titled Auto-Cellulite took place at the Alte Melzerai Cultural Center. A series of photos elegantly placed on black billboards, representing parts of wrecked cars photographed at such an angle as to make them look more like abstract paintings. The project’s somewhat cynical title (considered quite normal by contemporary artists) built an ironic and absurd connection between various types of physical damage.
The Documenta’s concept was formal and unpretentious. still, it proved effective for those European foundations whose programs envisaged cultural exchanges and East-West networks. In the West, exchanging information, establishing contacts, and carrying out cultural exchanges present no special problems, so projects such as this one invariably require Eastern European countries’ participation. Various German foundations contributed over 250,000 Euro for just the October presentation of Ukrainian visual arts, music, literature, choreography, drama, etc.
WHAT IS THE DANUBIAN IDENTITY?
Raising such sums is not easy even in the West, so the organizers had to make the educational aspects of the project most convincing. The same goes for the Danubian Region, a notion recently established in the European context. Probably for this reason a representative conference is held once every two years within the Documenta framework, in addition to the annual ethnic festivals in Regensburg.
A conference was held in Belgrade prior to the Ukrainian festival in Germany. Visiting that city for the first time was a most enjoyable experience, yet the conference left most participants wondering; the ungrounded globalism and stressed political propriety may have been meant to make up for low professionalism and the absence of any creative idea. The proposed notion of Danubian identity left all those present doubtful, as practically every country had problems with its own national identity. In an attempt to formulate the notion of the Danubian Region, the organizers invited a host of lecturers. A professor with the engineering and mechanics department of Belgrade University told about a Danube philatelic project; an official from the European Parliament convincingly described the importance of cultural cooperation for all countries of the region that aspire to EU membership. The Vice President of the Southeast Europe Association listed all the advantages awaiting those succeeding in doing so. Many examples were cited, illustrating cultural cooperation between individual countries, cities, and organizations. Of course, the presentation was mostly dedicated to the Danube, its natural, cultural, and spiritual wealth, all this being our joint legacy.
Creative projects were also presented at the conference, mostly addressing the Danube. Thus, a group of Austrian women artists spent several months sailing down the Danube aboard a small ship, staging performances in various cities and countries, collecting souvenirs that would later make up the Danube Floating Exhibition in Graz. Their counterparts from Belgrade proved even more serious-minded, setting off on a voyage to sample water in various rivers. Bottles with samples were then displayed as objets d’art, in line with a project called Collecting Rivers.
The problem is not that such artificial concepts are supported and carried out. Fortunately for Western culturati, Europe has enough funds also for professional projects. The problem is that Ukraine only chances to participate in such projects. But for Vylkovo, a village by the Danube, the Ukrainian presentation would not have been held in Regensburg. In this project Ukraine looks like Moldova, a distant almost forgotten relative that happened to be invited. Hence the attitude toward the participants. It would be hard to picture Regina Helwig-Schmit placing two German women curators in a single hotel room, yet precisely such hotel accommodations awaited practically all the Ukrainian participants: two women/men to a room with a single bed.
Creative projects carry an aesthetic as well as informative value; exhibits beget new exhibits, discovering new names, with new stars rising. And so a host of international curators and art experts annually attend all the most prestigious expositions across the world. Unfortunately, Ukrainians seldom take part in such international projects.
Ukrainian culture obviously does not have an adequate international presentation. Naturally, a project budgeted as it was in Germany is an opportunity to show Ukrainian culture abroad on a large scale. Without doubt, the organizers deserve all possible praise for financing a number of new works and articles for the catalog representing 25 Ukrainian artists. Had it not been for Documenta, Ukrainian artists and curators would not have seen the beautiful city of Regensburg. Too bad the large-scale educational project, despite its elevated spirit, will not reach beyond the boundaries of the medieval Bavarian city, since a national presentation in Regensburg, even in Munich, would not accomplish this. Nor is it a coincidence that artists call such trips cultural tourism, while such national presentations bring this country no international acclaim.
