Artists

Kurmaz Oleksandr

Born 1986 in Kyiv where he lives and works. Kurmaz graduated from the design department at the Ukrainian State Academy of Art in Kyiv. He was a finalist of the Kazimir Malevich Award, artist in residency of the Izolyatsia foundation, Donetsk, and the Artitude Kunstverein, Berlin. He had a solo exhibition in Warsaw in 2010, and participated in the RutaRuna Project for young artists from Ukraine and Sweden and the Must Art campaign in Minsk (both 2013).

Oleksandr Kurmaz started his artistic practice as a graffiti artist. When he gradually left the medium behind, he kept public space as his main domain and continued to use underground strategies of hijacking public space branded by advertisement and private commercial messages. In most of his work he plays a game of de-powering power structures, using both humoristic and conceptual interventions.

Recent exhibitions:

2013 – “Ukrainan News”, CSW Zamek Ujazdowsky, Warsaw, Poland

2013 – International Photography Festival FORMAT 13, Derby, Great Britain

2013 – “Coordinate system”, Yermilov Center, Kharkiv, Ukraine

2013 – “Peculiar Poetics”, Design Cloud, Chicago, USA

2012 - “Partly cloudy”, IZOLYATSIA, Donetsk, Ukraine.

During the exhibition of the 20 shortlisted artists for the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2013, Kurmaz claims both the exhibition venue and the Besarabska market hall and its surroundings. By a series of interventions, Kurmaz confuses the private and public space, cracking open the set expectations of the passer-by.