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Pavshyno Kunstverein. Informal Spaces and Artistic Practices in Western Ukraine
02.10 — 06.12 2015
Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe

Pavshyno* Kunstverein is a venue situated in the woods and valleys between Zakarpattya and Halyčyna that owns a rich collection of memories of local art practices and runs a continuous program of strolls, barbecues and hyperformance**. Founded in the early 20th century, this space has become an important centre for witnessing, embracing and losing trace of art. This space has originated in a number of specific geographical locations, but being walls-free can be transferred and practiced any other place. Its landscape is a remarkable co-producer, yet the space is rather constituted by artistic thinking than by its physical conditions.

 

In early 2014 curators Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko launched a tool to research artistic practices conceived in the context of institutional wastelands on a cultural periphery. The Open Archive project heired its structure from the specifics of the art scene in Western Ukraine which is largely based on collaboration, everyday routine, outdoor performance, continuous self- and communal education, mutual support and friendship. These practices may result in mapping territories as “galleries”, creating real galleries in available spaces, involving communities in collective action, documenting relations with friends and acquaintances, creating space for debate and being-together. The Open Archive aims at collecting documentation of these practices, yet opens a major question of how a network of relationships (between people and people, people and objects, people and places) can be translated into a stable institutional form, e.g. an exhibition.

 

The exhibition “Pavshyno Kunstverein” follows the principles of the archive in display and builds up a network narrative involving miscellaneous objects — all-sufficient artworks, fragments of long-lasting projects, documentation of acts and activities, craft supplies, artefacts of exhibition processes (originals and copies), samvydav (self-publishing) and many texts of different quality.

Supported by a series of talks and workshops in the “School of Archives” it addresses the question of historicization and institutionalization of art practices in a situation of a fragmentary material evidence of a highly relational content.

* As one of many local toponyms that host artistic production in Western Ukraine Pavshyno can be voluntarily replaced by any other from the list below at your choice: 
Poninka, Vynohradiv, Verkhne Synyovydne, Velyki Bilky, Medova Pechera, Ozerna, Novoyavoriv, Bryukhovychi, Radvanka.


** the term conceived by “Group” collectiveon our own.

 

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