The PinchukArtCentre invites everyone to become a part of the Open Group’s project “Biography” - the second show under the “PAC-UA Re-consideration” taking place in the art centre from 10 July till 24 August 2014.
Starting from today you can submit you biography by writing it down and bring it personally to the PinchukArtCentre; send it to the e-mail biography.openprojeс[email protected] or post it on the Facebook page facebook.com/opengroupart
Open Group: “Biographies may be signed/anonymous, short/long, true/made up, and so forth. Your biography will be part of the project, and you will become part of the Open Group!”
All biographies will be used by the artists in the framework of the “Biography” project: they will be read, voiced in the exhibition space, documented and stored to generate the Open Group’s “archive”.
For the project “Biography” the Open Group invited the Lviv-based artist Yuriy Sokolov. During the meetings and discussions with Yuriy Sokolov, the Open Group decided to study and rethink the notion of a biography, which underwent significant transformations in modern digital world.
The starting point of the exhibition is Yutiy Sokolov’s text that encourages visitors to write down biographies and bring them to the PinchukArtCentre. To inspire people to put their biographies into writing Sokolov cites an abstract from the text by Daniil Kharms with the key message that “a human is part of the world”.
“PAC-UA 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. In this project new generation of Ukrainian artists present new works inspired by older artistic positions or create art together with the representatives of the senior generation, just like in the case with the Open Group.
Open Group was founded in Lviv in 2012 by five Ukrainian artists: Yuriy Biley (born 1988 in Uzhorod), Anton Varga (born 1989 in Uzhgorod), Pavlo Kovach (born 1987 in Uzhgorod), Yevgen Samborsky (born 1984 in Ivano-Frankivsk), Stanislav Turina (born 1988 in Makeevka in the Donetsk region). In a process of building temporal, open “galleries” in public places, Open Group creates space, both physical and psychological, to engage artistic discourse and question the gallery as a curated and/or commercial space. Open Group consists of five founding members but continuously invites “anyone” to join the group and contribute to its artistic output.
Last year Open Group was nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize, the first private nationwide art prize for all Ukrainian artists up to 35. By the decision of the international jury Open Group with its project Ars longa, vita brevis won the Special prize of the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2013
Yuriy Sokolov (born 1946) is a Lviv-based artist, who significantly influenced development of Lviv artistic scene in 80-90s . Author of performances and objects; curator of exhibitions, festivals and alternative artistic initiatives including projects “Theatre of items or ecology of objects”, “Plus-90”, “Mike Johansen 7th Lviv Art and Literature Academy”; founder of galleries “Red ruras”, “Decimа” and artistic association “Centre of Europe”.
Open Group’s project will be located on the 4th floor of the art centre in the PAC-UA space and will be on show from 10 July till 24 August 2014.
Exhibition co-curators: Bjorn Geldhof, deputy artistic director of the PinchukArtCentre, and Tetiana Kochubinska, junior curator of the PinchukArtCentre.
