The project was realized in December 2021 at the Pokutian Local History Museum in Ivano-Frankivsk. The project was curated by artist Nikita Kadan.
The exhibition is a reconstruction of a significant exhibition in Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk) in 1931. This was a year when Western Ukrainian (Polish-Ukrainian) modernism (represented by groups such as “Artes,” “Krakow Group,” and ANUM) had already established itself, while Ukrainian-Soviet modernism had not been defeated and its key figures were not yet physically eliminated. This brief period allowed for the possibility of a joint exhibition of both branches of Ukrainian modernism. However, the exhibition was promptly closed by municipal authorities due to the presence of “anti-government and immoral content.” Only a few fragments of suspicious quality of photographic documentation and a (possibly fabricated) newspaper announcement remain, along with “reconstructions” of artworks from the exhibition, which were created in the 1960s-70s by an individual who witnessed the event as a graphic designer for the Ivan-Frankivsk Instrument-Making Plant Club. This individual, whose name wasn’t mentioned in the exhibition (represented simply by the initial “N” due to lack of consent from relatives, since in the 1960s-70s this person became a patient at Psychoneurological Dispensary No.1. According to N’s account, some of the charcoal drawings and sculptures were reproductions “from memory” of works N saw while studying at the Lviv School of Art and Industry. Therefore, according to N’s version, in a single exhibition in Stanislaviv, works from both branches of modernism were united. Artists like Margit Selska-Reich and Zofia Nalepinska, Leopold Lewicki and Vasyl Ermilov, Sviatoslav Gordynsky and Mykhailo Boichuk, Roman Selsky and Boris Kosarev met in this exhibition. N’s version is highly doubtful, mainly due to the fact that according to the diagnosed syndrome, N suffered from “revisionist mania,” a condition in which the patient believes that rewriting history causes immediate physical changes in the past. The coherent and unified display of “Ukrainian modernism” within this project is most likely N’s imaginative creation or an unrealized desire. One of the auxiliary installations of the project was a radio broadcast, found in the archives of radio and television in Kharkiv. Radio broadcasting began in Ukraine in 1924. On November 16, the first Soviet broadcast came from Kharkiv. The RV-4 radio station broadcasted three hours a day, including news, lectures, concerts, discussions with experts, and educational broadcasts. Then the era of All-Union radio broadcasting began. Thus, this was the third radio station in the world, on par with Pittsburgh and the BBC. Kharkiv was at the forefront of that time within the Ukrainian SSR. Therefore, a radio broadcast that confirmed the fact of the exhibition in 1931 also exists. The broadcast style and announcers’ voices are reminiscent of Valerian Polischuk, a Stalin-era Kharkiv broadcaster. The spelling is the same (“worker class,” etc.). In the narrative part of the broadcast, it discussed not a specific exhibition but rather the general connections and intersections of artistic environments in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. The idea to create this fictional radio program came from Alexander Suszynsky, with the script written by Yuri Andrukhovych. The performance was recorded by the artistic association “Shukhliada,” specifically Leroy Polyanskova, who is also a member of the SVITER group. The musical performance using controlled aleatorics techniques, a specially prepared evocation of a composition, featured composers from the Nova Opera group, Illia Rozumeiko, and Roman Hryhoriv. They performed a work by the famous Ukrainian avant-garde composer Y. Kofler, who was one of the first in Ukraine, then within the borders of Poland, to use dodecaphonic technique. This kind of music could have been performed at the opening of the exhibition in 1931.
The goal of this project is to reevaluate the positions of the avant-garde in the universalistic perspective of postcolonialism. There’s nothing more contradictory to the ideals of the avant-garde than considering it through a nationalist lens. In this perspective, K. Malevich is seen as inherently a peasant artist, who spent the first half of his life in Ukraine, communicated in a colloquial mix of languages, and the true source of suprematism is believed to be traditional folk embroidery with its ornamental color combination of red, black, and white (see D. Horbachov, citation). Based on these aspects, due to incompetence and lack of contemporary art theory and philosophy, an art model called “Little Russian colonial art” is constructed, which attempts to claim its piece of the avant-garde under a nationalist or even toponymic principle. The logic is as follows: Malevich – Kyiv – rename the airport in Boryspil to Malevich Airport. The film “The Conductor O.Sanin.” Numerous articles by D. Horbachov about the rural roots of avant-garde and abstract painting.
