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Kyiv Biennale 2015 "The School of Kyiv" presents a new format of an art biennale that integrates exhibition projects into the frame of public discussion and reflection. Over hundred works of Ukrainian and foreign artists will be featured in the open exhibition space.
Six "schools" of the biennale will function as community forums where international artists and intellectuals meet and work together with the public.

In response to the recent events in Ukraine, "The School of Kyiv" is going to focus its attention on the current problems of citizens in Ukraine, Europe and all over the world. In addition, the biennale will become a place for presentation of alternative egalitarian visions of the future.
The School of Kyiv is an independent project of the curators Georg Schöllhammer and Hedwig Saxenhuber in collaboration with the Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv). Some projects will be opened in several institutions in other European countries as integral parts of "The School of Kyiv" as well.

Within the "School of Kyiv" project curators suggested NAMU to present the work by William Kentridge "I am not Me, the Horse is not Mine".
For Kentridge drawing is the main tool for creating works, including video. The artist believes drawing to be a kind of negotiations between the idea and its implementation on paper, as well as a demonstration of the process of thinking itself. Instead of producing numerous sketches, the author uses a technique of palimpsest for his drawings (which also become the basis for video), making it impossible to return to the previous version or choose another sketch. In this way the artist creates a film, "where you cannot hide your hesitations and uncertainty."

In the work "I am not Me, the Horse is not Mine" Kentridge uses aesthetics of suprematism and constructivism, combining themes from Gogol's story "The Nose", opera of the same name by Dmitrii Shostakovych, and the well known case of Mykola Bukharin. Admiring the avant-garde energy of a change of the1920-30s, he also explores "actions of an individual in the face of enormous and inexorable social Other, whether it is the state, party, history or family."

It is easy to see that the installation interacts with the line of the avant-garde in the permanent exhibition of NAMU. Pieces by Oleksandra Ekster, El Lysytskyi, Oleksandr Arkhypenko and others create parallels to Kentridge's work.

In the light of ideas of "school" and discussions it seemed interesting for us to appeal to Ukrainian school of art and to create a visual conceptual "conversation" between Kentridge's and Anatolii Petrytskyi's works. Petrytskyi was universally gifted master: he worked with easel and book graphics, painting, design, scenography. The latest revealed the essence of his avant-garde art most fully.

In the first room, developing an idea of a graphic dialogue, we turned to the NAMU collection of graphic arts and chose 12 portraits of the Ukrainian intellectuals Petrytskyi created in 1929-31. Those whose identity became a threat to the system. For some of them, the resistance ended in the massacre of 1937.
After crossing Kentridge's "carousel", in the last room the viewer for the first time sees Petrytskyi's drawings of 1943.
In July 1941, Petrytskyi joined the people's volunteer corps in Kharkiv. Later together with actors of Kharkiv theater, he and his wife evacuated to Alma-Ata. In May 1943, after receiving a permission, Petrytskyi went to the firont. Together with the army he passed with fights from Kursk to Kharkiv. He was already documenting the new theater of the absurd, with no faces, only backs and empty landscapes.

William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955. He is known for his prints, drawings, animation films and theater set designs. Kentridge received many awards, including Kyoto Prize (2010) and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (2013). His works were presented at the biennale in San-Paolo (2013); Documenta 13 (Cassel) (2012), MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York) (2011), Louvre (2010).

Anatolii Petrytskyi (1895 - 1964) was a Ukrainian artist. He studied art under the lead of Vasyl Krychevskyi and Oleksandr Murashko. Participant of Venice Biennale (1930). Began to work in theater in 1916, and in 1917 he became the chief artist of the Youth Theater of Les Kurbas (1917-1919). Anatolii Petrytskyi went through the totalitarian system of 1920 - 1930s. The artist was lucky to escape prison and deportation, but his bright individual manner constantly put him under the close supervision of Soviet security services.

 

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