Kunsthalle Exnergasse

Into the Dark

19 - 29 May 2016

Hudrada
INTO THE DARK
19 – 29 May 2016

Curated by Hudrada

Artists: Leonid Voitsehov, Lesia Khomenko, Sasha Kurmaz, Lada Nakonechna, Yevgen Nasadyuk, Yuri Leiderman and Igor Chatskin, Petro Ryaska, Fedir Tetyanych, Masoch Fund, “Night” movement, R.E.P. group

"Into the Dark" - an exhibition by the curatorial group Hudrada - is a collected documentation of performance actions carried out by artists at different times, starting in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly in Ukraine, as well as abroad. A deliberately helpless political gesture, taken to absurd lengths, and sometimes carried out completely alone, is what links these actions. And yet both responsibility for the gesture and its utterance spread beyond the action itself, and anyone who did not take part is nonetheless involuntarily drawn in to its field.
The 1980s and 1990s actions of Fedir Tetyanych, Yuri Leiderman and Masoch Fund do not bear witness to the formation of a tradition; in the context of the exhibition they assert their relevancy today, exploring the mad, the self-traumatising, the antisocial and at the same moment socially-utopian act.
The chronology of the works presented in the exhibition may be seen as capturing the principal political upheavals and events which have occurred in Ukraine over the last 30 years. The documenting of a lonely passage through a forest at night, "Night in the forest", a collective work from 2015 initiated by a Russian-Ukrainian artists' collective, completes the series.

Hudrada (Creative committee) act as curatorial and activist interdisciplinary group, active since 2008. Hudrada’s members are architects, political activists, translators, writers, designers, and artists. Projects organised by Hudrada are based on discussion combining the experience of participants. These projects have form of exhibitions, which become a platform for theoretical work, and public activist campaigns.
 

Tags: Yuri Leiderman, Lada Nakonechna