The Power Theorem Exhibition
"Rojtburd and freedom are definitely synonymous," the artist's friend Andriy Lozovyi wrote in an essay dedicated to the artist. Oleksandr Rojtburd passed away prematurely in August 2021, but his work continues to address the acute topical issues of our time, his artworks are displayed in leading galleries around the world, and important exhibitions dedicated to the artist's work are being held.
Rojtburd began his career in the 1970s-1980s in Odesa. In 1987, a brand new stage in his work began with the Kyiv exhibition "Youth of the Country", which gave impetus to the "Ukrainian trans-avant-garde", which Rojtburd brought to Odesa.
In 1998, the artist created the video work Psychedelic Invasion of the Battleship Potyomkin into Sergey Eisenstein's Tautological Hallucinations, which in 2021 became part of the permanent collection of the Pompidou Centre in Paris as part of the large project Ukraine at the Pompidou.
This video work is considered to be the most important of Oleksandr Roitburd's works from the 1990s; it was exhibited at the M17 Contemporary Art Center, exhibited at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, and became the only Ukrainian video work to be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Rojtburd believed that the artist naturally has the power to influence the world, and he devoted his life to the implementation of this vision. He fought for the institutionalisation of Ukrainian contemporary art and personally headed and reformed the Odesa Fine Arts Museum, which, owing to Rojtburd and his team, received the status of National Museum (Odesa National Fine Arts Museum).
The exhibition “Oleksandr Rojtburd. The Power Theorem” is running at the PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv city, Ukraine) until July 14, 2024. It was supposed to open in March 2022. Over these two years, the relevance of the chosen theme of the exhibition has not been diminished and has become more significant for society.
The selection of artworks, documents and artefacts from the private and family collections for the exhibition The Power Theorem allows one to understand the artist through his perception of the interaction between culture, society and power.
Oleksandr Burlaka was invited to create the architecture of the exhibition, which comments on the figure of Rojtburd and, by extension, his city, Odesa.