Exhibitions

The PinchukArtCentre presents “TV Studios / Rooms without Doors”, a solo show by Ukrainian artist Alevtina Kakhidze that starts a new exhibitions series of the “PAC-UA Re-consideration”. Re-consideration researches the relations and influences between Ukrainian art scene of today and artistic practices of the past. It discovers the continuity of tradition in the context of interrupted development of Ukrainian art history, showing new works created by new generation of artists inspired by older artistic positions. 

In “TV studios / Rooms without Doors” Alevtina Kakhidze draws inspiration from “Solid Television Studio” (1998) installation by Vassily Tsagolov. She refers to Tsagolov’s message about television stating that “what appears as a reality has been formed inside the walls of the TV studio”. Kakhidze widens this idea saying that every reality can be staged and its perception manipulated.  

Playing with this message in her installation at the PinchukArtCentre, she creates her own environment, where she places her transformed appropriation of Tsagolov’s piece together with science fiction books, her first source of inspiration for inventing own realities. Linking science fiction and “TV reality” Alevtina Kakhidze blurs boundaries between constructed and experienced reality.

Alevtina Kakhidze, artist: “There were no artists, no galleries in my native town. But there was a library with a fiction department. I have read everything that was on the shelves: Saimak, Finney, Le Guin, Lem, Strugatsky. Afterwards I have become an artist, but with a special way of showing reality, – I imagine reality, in other words I fantasize it…”

Swapping reality and fiction is Kakhidze’s way to continue her story writing where the truth seems to be imaginary and the imaginary seems to be truthful. During the exhibition the artist will make five story-based live performances that will be broadcasted in a format of TV news as part of her exhibition.

Bjorn Geldhof, Deputy Artistic Director of the PinchukArtCentre: “With PAC-UA
Re-consideration the PinchukArtCentre starts a new series of shows which investigates the intuitive links between different generations of Ukrainian artists, where young generation finds inspiration or links with past artistic practices. In the case of Alevtina Kakhidze it turned out to be a very special connection not only with an artwork by Tsagolov that she had seen 12 years ago, that made such an impression and gave her an impulse to create her works today, but also the fact that she goes back to her early childhood years where her only escape from reality was to be found in science fiction books, which defined her artistic practice.”

The exhibition is organised and co-curated by Bjorn Geldhof, Deputy Artistic Director of the PinchukArtCentre, and Tatiana Kochubinska, junior curator of the PinchukArtCentre.

The show is open on the 4^th floor in the “PAC-UA” space from 17 May till 30 June, 2014.

Alevtina Kakhidze (born 1973 in Zhdanovka, Donetsk region, Ukraine). She works with performance, installation, drawings, texts and design objects. She is the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award winner in 2008, First prize winner of the Competition for Young Curators and Artists, Kyiv, Center for Contemporary Art at NaUKMA in 2002.

In 2004 Kakhidze graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, graphic department. In 2004 – 2006 she studied at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands. In 2009 she was artist in residency at Open House Iaspis, Stockholm, Sweden.

Kakhidze is a co-founder of a private residency for international artists in the village Muzychi and on-line publication about art www.kram.in.ua. She is a participant of numerous international and Ukrainian art projects including up-coming public programme of the Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg, Russia, Drawing Class for Collectors within the 7^th Berlin Biennial, You are at Home of Vladimir Alevtina Suzi Penelopa at Ya Gallery, Kyiv, Working for Change, a project for the Morocco Pavilion within the 54^th Biennale di Venezia, I’m late for a plane that’s impossible to be late for, Якщо/Если/IF (Perm, Museum for Contemporary Art PERMM), 1989–2009: Turbulent World – Telling Time (Berlin, Art Academy, Kiev, National Art Museum of Ukraine, Moscow, National Center of Contemporary Art etc.), Endless Sphere (Kyiv, Center for Contemporary Art at NaUKMA) etc.