Screen[far]shots

From December 2022, the exhibition series Screen[far]shots, which presents Ukrainian artists, will be on show at KVOST. It includes two alternating solo exhibitions in the KVOST SchauFenster, a photography exhibition and various accompanying events.

Curated by Vitalii Shupliak

Screen[far]shots attempts to make the viewer pause, to direct the eye away from the personal screen to the KVOST SchauFenster and thus to shed new light on a situation that has dominated news coverage in the West for more than a year: war in Europe, war in our immediate neighbourhood. Whereas the immediacy of the Russian attacks and the Ukrainian defense, which was broadcast by the media, initially caused consternation and a resulting solidarity, the images of the atrocities are becoming more commonplace with each passing month. The flood of images of horror, always available and ubiquitously transmitted to our screens, leads to a growing need to look away or inevitably to deadening empathy.

This is also ensured by the fight on another front, a front that is physically tangible on the countless screens of our everyday lives: The Ukrainian president is fighting like no head of state before him with the unconventional tools of a media professional. Putin’s Russia is responding with fake news and digital sabotage.

By means of multimedia artistic positions and without reproducing the everyday images of horror through brutal pictures, Screen[far]shots tries to draw attention back to what is crucial: empathy with the suffering that people in our immediate neighbourhood have to experience every day. Suffering that cannot be turned off by locking the screen.

 

Bakin, Furyk, Kononova, Poliakov & Subach . Ukr. Work-in-Progress
Exhibition & book presentation at KVOST
25.02.2023. – 05.03.2023

Vic Bakin / Untitled / 2022 / courtesy: Vic Bakin, KVOST & EEP Berlin
Photo: Vic Bakin / Untitled / 2022

Ukraine. Work-in-Progress is an exhibition dedicated to the work of Vic Bakin, Nazar Furyk, Yana Kononova, Viacheslav Poliakov and Elena Subach, the five selected recipients of EEP Berlin’s support initiative RGULAR (Research Grant for Ukrainian Lens-based Artists and Researchers).

As the name suggests, the offered perspective does not center on a finished project or a definitive claim, but rather it opens up new spaces for discussion on the complexities of the modern Ukrainian context. The exhibition focuses on new modes of subjectivity which are profoundly influenced by the wartime devastation. Photographic language and practice as methods of witnessing testify to these complexities. This showcase forms the basis for an upcoming book of the same name and is a part of the curators’ ongoing research.

A cooperation between KVOST & EEP Berlin, curated by Amina Ahmed & Maya Hristova.

KVOST TALK . 01.03.2023 . 7:30 pm
Amina Ahmed & Maya Hristova

The curators of the exhibition, Amina Ahmed and Maya Hristova are going to have a conversation devoted to the process, the fragile and long work of the artist in the field of war, the impossibility of completing a statement — a condition familiar to most actors of the Ukrainian cultural scene. Ahmed, who has been conducting long-term interviews with the selected artists for the upcoming book, is going to offer insights on their artistic practice. Hristova is going to share the story of RGULAR as a support initiative and how what is happening currently in Ukraine fits into the larger context of Eastern European photography.

 

Yuriy Biley
FREEDOM FOR ALLThe Value of These Words Also Depends on You
KVOST SchauFenster
26.01.2023 – 05.03.2023
The KVOST window is illuminated daily from 2-10 pm.

For his exhibition, Yuriy Biley uses archive photos of German postwar photographer Rolf Goetze, from the collection of the Stadtmuseum Berlin, documenting the main events of the Cold War in West Berlin. Biley obscures the surroundings and leaves the slogans standing, taking them out of their historical context and showing their relevance in our time. These slogans from Berlin’s past, which became the focus of the series of works, are the values Ukraine fights for today.

Yuriy Biley (*1988) is a Ukrainian visual artist and curator.

The opening will be accompanied by a performance of Ukrainian musicians. Starting with a light house/electro set by be_ca_di (Resident of the music labels ОЧІ and shum.rave). After this, othersidecoma (Resident of the music label ОЧІ), who traveled to Berlin from Toronto, will play experimental electronic. Finally, the tomi will present his ambient/drone sounds.

Past

Victoria Pidust . Untitled to war I
KVOST SchauFenster
01.12.2022 – 21.01.2023
The KVOST window is illuminated daily from 2-10 pm.

Untitled to war I is a panoramic work by the artist Victoria Pidust (1992* UKR), created on the basis of a photo diary from a trip to Kyiv in spring 2022. The images appear abstract at first glance, but behind each of them is a reflection of the horrors of war, a destroyed building of a shopping mall. Using photogrammetry and artificial intelligence, Victoria Pidusts final 2D images deliberately play with the shortcomings and flaws of digital scans, raising the question of veracity and Russian manipulation of information, including modern propaganda and the use of deep fake.