Open Group

In their ongoing project Open Gallery the artists deal with the natural, given or non-existent places and territories that are transformed by their delicate (at times heavy) interventions into outlined spaces. Some of the galleries also funtion as temporary exhibition halls, others are complete in their own right. 

Artists' text on the project:

We've established a travelling gallery designed to escort an artist or a group of artists (as it is in our case). By changing the space around us, we outline it and work in it. The project aim is the implementation and transformation of 'unreality' into reality; it's an attempt to create a new space and to outline a certain life span. An important component is the creation of the spaces 'prior' and 'subsequent'.

In this particular case we use nominal walls of a gallery providing them with a nominal indication of the action (countdown), 'its presence'. In the future that space will evolve, create derivative precedents or it'll decline, absorbing itself like a black hole.

The creation of a space is a result of a point-to-point living which can be compared to a whole life (a sort of similar situation was demonstrated in the Detenpula gallery).

Dva ("two") Gallery

Realized: 20.08.2012

Located at the Chorna Mountain on the banks of the Tysa River, Zakarpatska oblast, Ukraine. The gallery cosists of two rooms in the ground each of a man's height. The "rooms" were used for slaking of lime. Their definite natural and timely metamorphoses. Thus one room is full of stale water and the other is empty. The steps built by the group and inviting to the gallery are the only man-made adjustment.

Tysa Gallery

Realized 21.08.2012

Located on the bakns of the Tysa River (not far from the town of Vynogradiv), Zakarpatska oblast, Ukraine. The gallery was created in one of the abandoned buildings of the concrete factory as a part of modern arts festival "Kredens 2012". It was decided to make the gallery functional by using its space as a classical exhibition hall. The first collective exhibition of the group members took place there.

Gallery on Arsenalna Square

Realized 08.09.2012

The gallery was created as a part of Lviv Actual Art Week in the autumn of 2012. The construction is made of three and four meter wood planks. There is a social component of the project besides the reflection of city's public space: the group members were bringing other people to the project raising money to get the timber. Each person could pay the price of only one plank.

Gallery with a Forest View

Realized 18.10.2012

The gallery was realized during the group's visit of Granny Hall residence in the forest near the village of Samiylychy, Volynska oblast, Ukraine. The relative walls of the gallery were sketched by chalk. The plan was dictated by the location of the trees and looks like a sign of visual experience indication.

550 Square Meters Gallery

Realized 19.10.2012

The gallery was realized during the group's visit of Granny Hall residence. The common technique of pre-building operation was the inspiration of the gallery's visual form, which was traced by a stretched thread. The gallery in the field invited people to enter through a long 30 meter corridor that began with a path. The area of the gallery is 550 square meters.

Gallery Inside

Realized 19.07.2013

Sometimes human height is enough. Sometimes just human is enough. Sometimes it's enough to remove a layer of ground, open the surface - and things you felt externally and proper would be felt variable and inside.

1.7 m, 8 m of ground. Found and excavated. 

1.7 m, 8 m of transformed system (not necessarily for the good)

Reterritorization (from the ground to the territory).

The gallery is open. 

Gallery on the Stretch of the Road

Realized 22.08.2014

The gallery was created on a strech of a road with two road signs designating its space. The signs mimick those traditionally marking the beginning and the end of a city/town/village. The gallery thus was around 200 meters long and could be grasped at glance. 

The gallery was creted within the framework of "Kredents" Festival in the outskirts of "Skalka" recreation camp in Zakarpattya region.

Gallery Stryi–Biruchiy

Realized 12.09.2014

The gallery was created with similar road sign, while one of them was installed on the bank of the Stryi river in Carpathian mountains, Lviv region and the other — on the Biruchiy peninsula in Azov sea, Zaporizzhya region. The space of the gallery is thus defined by the curve of the river (or the water to be precise) which through another, bigger, river falls into the sea. The route which one would have to follow in order to see the space of the gallery is correspondingly about 1000 km long. Open Group gave an account to a space that for obvious reasons has remained unattended by the artists themselves. 

The gallery was creted within the framework of "Biruchiy 14" Festival, Zaporizzya region.

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Gallery with a Forest View

Artists' text on the project:

The project is based on the idea of our long-term ongoing work "Open Gallery". Previously within this project for demarcation or definition of a space we used certain tools to materialize this space or its boarders.

The first step in the 'Ars longa, vita brevis' was our renouncement of a narrative physical demarcation. This time the space was being defined only by the 'vision' of the four participants.  

Each camera gave a possibility to fix the simultaneity of existence inside one space from 4 points of view.

Dimension system was time. No matter how many kilometers we passed, the whole project was measured in 9 hour-long recordings on each camera. '9 hours' corresponds to the opening hours of the art institution that exhibited the project.

The second step was searching online. Our life was also defined by the camera. Simultaneity of our existence. Correspondingly, the existence of the group was also being questioned.

Fixation of the gallery by our cameras that by default defines the space was a gesture. A gesture of isolation. So we always needed to think about clearness, 'silence' and contrasts of this isolation.

During the project the whole 9-hour stream was broadcast online in the exhibition space of the art centre.

The third and final step was documentation. Existence of every gallery after the process of its definition ended became abstract. The gallery thus continues to exist as a set of recorded information on a flash drive.

Everything else in the frames represents its 'readable' description.

Documentation elements:

1. Date and title.

2. Simultaneous screenshots of the fixed space from each camera (a, b, c, d).

3. Flash drive containing 4-channel video of the defined space.

4. Explanatory text, space duration (in minutes) and place.

5. Artifacts (optional).

In the course of 59 days as the project lasted, the following people were joining the group:

Yulia Ibragimova, Pavlo Kovach (senior), Sergiy Yakunin, Anatoliy Tatarenko, Oleksiy Salmanov, Volodymyr Vorotniov, Maria Lianko, Liza German, Tatiana Kochubinska, Dobrynia Ivanov, Sasha Kurmaz, Tomasc Gazlinski, Valeriy Kumanovski, Lubomir Tymkiv, Lada Nakonechna,

Danylo Kovach, Ivan Oleksiak, San Morce, Volodymyr Topiy, Vyacheslav Polyakov.

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"The Keys from the Gallery" as an extension of the "Tysa Gallery" project was created for the Muzychi Christmas Art Fair in Dnipropetrovsk 2012. 

Tysa Gallery was created in an abondonded house that the artists discovered in the Carpathian Mountains in August 2012 and managed to open with the key from their apartment. Inside they created a group show exhibiting one artwork each and locked the door when they were leaving. For the Art Fair they made 6 copies of the key, packed each in a box adding a route map to the site and a photograph of the object from the show that could be taken away by the person who bought it. 

Artists' text on the Gallery Tysa 

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Oleksiy Salmanov joined Open Group for the duration of performance. The audience were invited to the attic of an abandoned building in Lviv. While entering the space every visitor received a note from Oleksiy Salmanov saying "I have joined Open Group", and when leaving, correspondingly, a note saying "I have left Open Group". On the entrance wall the artist registered the time when the first visitor entered and the time when the last one left. According to that the performance lasted from 16:38 to 17:47 on 6 September 2013. 

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Artists' text on the project

Normally Open group’s projects are the result of aging ideas from one or more members of the group, further discourse, and thus the embodiment of transformation. Since the beginning of the project in the core of the band is a long-term project “Open Gallery". Often result depends on the spatial conditions of the environment. Category of time (limit) in these projects takes a back seat.

In contrast to the “Open Gallery”, the project “Between Us”, in this form as it is, was released due to a clear time limit for work. Its critical value, and possibly one of the reasons that the fixation of time between us and became the basis of this experiment.

Starting work on the project, which wasn’t previously undefined by any overall vision or any special conditions of space, three weeks before the opening, in an attempt to move to one-piece design, the participants raised the question of integrity. Before us clearly have appeared our differences, the existence of each one’s individual positions, largely in conflict, contradict each other. The next step was the decision to reflect on the phenomenon. The phenomenon of community. Situation in which the people were united by one goal. We tried to take the position of the observer on the process of creating a project in the group. Watch the group as the object. Since then tried to ignore the need for completion of the project, from our conversations about a possible show, and they are committed, given the status of a full-fledged art object.

Recording began. Ideas were being born, debated, and then rejected, again and again going around. Immediately there was a need to find out the priorities and motivations of each other regarding cooperation in the group. We recorded interviews with each participant, primarily for internal use, to address the issues between us. This exhibition is presented to us as a general introduction to the gallery’s activities, respectively, “the entry” required to determine the initial conditions.

Three days before the opening we stopped recording. 30 hours of talks. Sign of sandbox somewhere in the middle. Appeared and disappeared later. In the end was decided to leave. Tables around which we gathered were taken to Kiev. Both direct artifacts of our life together.

The relevance of this project to the viewer is uncertain. However, it is an attempt to explore the Open group’s existence.

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Artists' text on the project