Nine professional artists from Berlin, Düsseldorf and Leipzig have been working at Instytut Avtomatyki “Common Space” since April 2023, as part of or around the German residency project “Ich komme und sehe”.
The projects aim was to make it possible for artists based in Germany to work at Kyiv Instytut Avtomatyki for one month each and interact with and contribute to the Kyiv art scene, especially the artists of NAHIRNA22
At the start of the full-scale invasion many Ukrainian artists were forced to move their studio westwards, in contrast to this it felt like very few western artists have come to work in Ukraine. Especially non-journalistic, non-conceptual formats seemed to be almost absent. There is a niche place for artistic media used as documentation of world events, that are today documented mostly by photo-journalism or film. Fine art stores different information, in different forms.
There is no group concept to this exhibition, the uniting factor is that all the participating artists were willing and interested to work in Kyiv, in the reality of being at the edge of war. And tell their story of what they see, in their art.
Some of the participating artists have been working in Ukraine for many years, some were even born in Ukraine, others are in Kyiv for the first time, thus the exhibition is showing different stages of work, from finished artworks to results of experimental research processes. Reflecting the question, how to deal with this serious reality in our art.
Added to this there is the question about the value of the outsider´s perspective, most German artists, can´t feel what Ukrainians feel and we will never know as much about your culture and situation as anyone in the streets of Kyiv.
The works shown in this exhibition have mostly been created in and around Instytut Avtomatyki this summer 2023 and are inspired by the art, discussions and cooperative exhibitions with the artists of the art group NAHIRNA22.
The residency “Ich komme und sehe” was created and organized by the painter Paul Maciejowski. It is funded by the Kunststiftung North Rhine Westphalia and Ministry of Culture and Sciences North Rhine Westphalia, Germany.