Culture under pressure from OOO/OOOO | Boris Filonenko

Artists, going for water, can bring a few black holes from the well of modernity. These are not always traditional “works” — they may not have clear boundaries, a beginning or an end, and an exhibition is only one of the possible forms of their existence. It is with the question “Do artists need an exhibition?” that this collection begins.

Artistic practices here emerge as part of a complex network of visual culture, political systems, ecological crises, interspecies interdependencies, and the totality of war.

The collection of critic Borys Filonenko contains selected texts for 2020–2024, in which he reflects on the Kharkiv Biennial of Young Art, the Ukrainian Pavilion in Venice, the Khanenko Museum, and also analyzes the works of the Open Group, Vyacheslav Polyakov, Katya Buchatskaya, Nikita Kadan, Pavlo Makov, Andriy Sahaydakovsky, Katya Libkind, Stanislav Turina, Yaroslav Futymsky, Mykola Kolomiyets, Lia Dostleva and Andriy Dostleva, Daniil Revkovsky, and Andriy Rachinsky.

These texts are about art in an age of excess and depletion, about the historiographical turn, the avant-garde and the dinosaur bone, about workshops and shelters, volunteerism and broad social connections, and about the roles of artists in a dangerous environment.