“A City in the Framework”

The exhibit “A City in the Framework” at the KalytaArtKlub has launched a new project dedicated to city landscapes and city culture.

Back during the Renaissance period European culture got reacquainted with antiquity and fell in love with it. Gradually the love to old-age monuments became a pillar of European culture, a kind of antithesis to the unreserved appeal to progress. But the passion for the past embodied in architecture remains a privilege for a minority. Of course, not the minority that owns the greater part of the national wealth, but those caring people, whom culture expert and philosopher Hryhorii Pomeranz calls a “creative minority,” and for whom fragments of the historical canvas of a city closely intertwine with their personal recollections and experiences. So you won’t find any panoramic or “glamor” shots of the city in the exposition of the cycle’s first exhibit, dedicated to Kyiv, titled “A Disappearing City.” Thus, in the works of the artists whose names are already part of the city itself — like Yurii Khymych, Halyna Hryhorieva, Yakym Levych, Borys Rapoport, Mykhailo Veinstein, Zinaida Volkovynska, Hryhorii Sokyrynsky, and Oleksandr Vovk — you can see the ruins of the Kyiv University, find yourself on a dark evening street, peep at a cozy Pechersk courtyard through a window, or feel the freshness of a chestnut alley. The authors are somehow present in their respective works, a demonstrative reminiscence of that which we are not able to remember. The works of the famous Sixtiers are exhibited along with the contemporary works by Liubov Rapoport, Olena Ahamian, Oleksii Apollonov and others. Olena Pryduvalova, who loves the city dearly, sees Kyiv, washed by the rain, through the windows of her studio, whereas the masterful hand of Pinkhas Fishek turns the boring Berezniaky nine-storey buildings into eastern pagodas. Architecture is a bridge through which we receive the memories of our parents and pass them on to our children — this is how the civilization is preserved and spread.

The quasi-fanatical belief that “new is always better,” erodes memories and makes life insipid. And when, at first sight, the least important buildings are destroyed, one or another thread, which supported the spirit of those living in that place, is broken.

A lack of understanding of this quality of old houses is the main sin of many of our compatriots, as is the illusion that a replica can be as good as the original.

The exhibit “A City in the Framework” will be open at the KalytaArtKlub (Kyiv, 6 Bohomolets St.) till July 16.