Exhibitions

The PinchukArtCentre presents the 9^th PAC-UA project – an exhibition by Ukrainian artist Sergiy Bratkov entitled “The Good Buys the Evil”. The show includes 3 new works by Bratkov especially created for the PinchukArtCentre. The artist will present photography-based pieces with neon elements which reflect recent survey of the city as well as a recent video work. 

As a starting point for the exhibition Bratkov takes a well-known aphorism from fairy tales “The Good defeats the Evil” and deliberately changes it into “The Good Buys the Evil”. This transformation makes us reflect upon assignment of roles in today’s society: who is the Dragon, who is the Winged Horse, and who is Tsar? Substitution of one word proposes food for thought about substitution of values, value priorities changes, and tension between good and bad. 

Each piece is built upon a catchy provocative saying, which mirrors at once our reality and at the same time denotes cultural stereotypes. Semantically the pieces altogether are closely connected to each other and set thinking on relationships human–power, power–society, human–homeland, and human–society, which are deeply rooted in Russian and Ukrainian collective conscience.

Furthermore, the exhibition invokes a feeling of solitude and anonymity. “To leave to forget” is an eternal dilemma to come in a big city followed with an obtrusive idea to find a shelter or to run away. Two photographs – one depicting a man with his back to the viewer against the dull background of the metro and the other one showing a pattern-like exotic landscape as a symbol to escape from a megalopolis – convey the idea of loneliness. Emotionally this idea is being strengthened by the video of a dog who is closed in an empty apartment, and that gives quite a different phonation to the whole exhibition.

Bjorn Geldhof, Deputy Artistic Director of the PinchukArtCentre: “PinchukArtCentre presents Sergiy Bratkov, one of the leading and internationally most recognized Ukrainian artists, with his challenging new workgroup, which reflects on the reality of life in a metropole. The good things, the bad things, the anonymity and the loneliness, showing Bratkov as an artist, who discovers the absurdity in the reality of life and highlights it, reflecting on the madness of the city.”

The exhibition is organised and co-curated by Tatiana Kochubinska, participant of the PinchukArtCentre’s Curatorial Platform. The show is open on the 4^th floor in the PAC-UA space from March 27 till April 21, 2013.

On March 27, 2013, at 19:00 Sergiy Bratkov and Tatiana Kochubinska will lead the PAC-UA Talk dedicated to The “Good Buys the Evil” project. 

PAC-UA is a special program line to present new produced works of Ukrainian artists embedded in the context of the Collection Platform, aiming to research ongoing artistic processes within the country and support strong and long-term collaboration between the PinchukArtCentre and the artists. With its project, PinchukArtCentre presents a dynamic and flexible program for Ukrainian artists that is showcased in the PAC-UA space for a period of one month. Since its launch in 2011, the exhibitions by Vasyl Tsagolov, Arsen Savadov, Oleksandr Roytburd, Iliya Chichkan, Mykola Matsenko, Pavlo Makov, Zhanna Kadyrova, and Alexey Salmanov were showcased at the PAC-UA.