“Avantgarde gegen Amtsschimmel“
Review by Ingeborg Ruthe

www.berliner-zeitung.de

KVOST is pleased to announce Larisa Sitar as this year’s recipient of the KVOST scholarship and the Claus Michaletz Preis 2023, which is endowed with 10,000 euros. The artist was selected from 174 applications.

This year, the jury consisted of Nadine Barth (author and curator with a focus on photography), Karen Boros (Boros Collection and VIP Relation Art Basel), Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher (curatorial team with a focus on Eastern and Southeastern Europe), Dr. Silke Manske and Corinna Reuter (Secco Pontanova Foundation) and Stephan Koal (curator and director of the Kunstverein).

Larisa Sitar was born in Baia Mare, Romania in 1984 and lives in Bucharest. In her sculptures and bas-reliefs, Sitar examines the intersection between art and architecture, focusing in particular on ornament as a sociopolitical statement. In doing so, she combines well-known analogue and digital techniques, to evoke certain cultural associations. In an examination of how historical and social contexts are reflected in design elements, Sitar’s works form an interplay of past and present. Therefore, they invite us to encounter familiar and accustomed surroundings in a different way.

In addition to the KVOST scholarship – an artist residency in Berlin with a subsequent solo exhibition during Berlin Art Week 2023 at KVOST – Larisa Sitar will receive the Claus Michaletz Preis. In memory of the publisher and founder of the Secco Pontanova Foundation, the prize has been awarded to artists from Eastern Europe since 2020. The full amount of the prize money is freely available to the scholarship holders.

„Wie ein Künstlerkollektiv die Stasi foppte“
Review by Jens Hinrichsen

“EINE MEILE MEHR”
Review by Ina Hildebrandt

www.tip-berlin.de

24.03.2023 . 7 pm

Sebastian Wells (editor), Helena Melikov and Christian Dettler (SHIFT BOOKS), Collective Scrollan (art direction). Connected from Kyiv: Ivanna Kozachenko, Vsevolod Kazarin, Andrii Ushytskyi (editors).

The magazine Soлomiya was founded in April 2022 by photographers Vsevolod Kazarin from Kyiv and Sebastian Wells from Berlin to photograph young people on the streets of Kyiv and to showcase the work of other young artists from Ukraine. Distributed in Kyiv, Berlin, London, Brussels, Paris and some parts of the world, it sold out after a few months. Since October 2022, the editors Ivanna Kozachenko, Andrii Ushytskyi, Vsevolod Kazarin and Sebastian Wells as well as the art direction around Anne-Lene Proff and Peter Bünnagel  from Kollektiv Scrollan and the Berlin-based publishing house SHIFT BOOKS have been working on a second issue of the magazine. In addition to photography, film, contemporary art, literature and, most importantly, the everyday life of young people in Ukraine, the magazine attempts to convey the complex reality of life under the permanent gaze of Russian aggression through the works of talented and already well-known Ukrainian artists.

Opening . 26.04.2023 . 7 – 9 pm

CLARA MOSCH
und frühe Kunstaktionen in der DDR

27.04. – 30.07.2023

The exhibition is dedicated to the producer gallery Clara Mosch, which existed from 1977 to 1982 in Karl-Marx-Stadt (today Chemnitz), as well as the artist group of the same name that developed from it.

CLARA MOSCH and Early Art Actions in the GDR combines original works of art and editions together with photographs and videos from the Ralf-Rainer Wasse Archive of the Lindenau Museum Altenburg collection. It is the first institutional “solo exhibition” in Berlin, which deals with the work of Clara Mosch.

Foto: © Lindenau-Museum Altenburg / Archiv Ralf-Rainer Wasse

01.03.2023 . 7:30 pm
AMINA AHMED & MAYA HISTOROVA

Registration: post@kvost.de

The curators of the exhibition Ukraine. Work-in-Progress, 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.