New on Kyiv's cultural scene: the PinchukArtCentre (11/19/06)

New on Kyiv's cultural scene: the PinchukArtCentre

by Larissa Babij
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - Two dancing bunnies pulse to club music while a rotating disco ball sprinkles light across the walls.

Photographs display nude men and women in soccer poses in the next room.

One floor below, a mechanical structure lifts a silver ball to a height of two meters and sets it rolling through a series of brightly colored wheels until it lands with a metallic clunk and returns to repeat the process.

PinchukArtCentre, the new museum of contemporary art funded by Ukrainian industrial and television magnate Victor Pinchuk, ignited Kyiv's cultural scene on September 16.

Located in the Arena City complex in central Kyiv, PinchukArtCentre occupies 2,500 square meters across three floors in a renovated early 20th century building across from the Bessarabskyi Market on Khreschatyk's south end.

The museum's declared aim is to promote Ukrainian art internationally and to introduce artists from around the world to Ukraine.

At the lavish opening night ceremony in the Arena City courtyard, Mr. Pinchuk and his wife, Elena Franchuk, welcomed members of Ukraine's arts community, as well as politicians and cultural authorities.

The ceremony became the talk of Kyiv not for the pyrotechnics, but their unintended result.

Polystyrene blocks, symbolizing a smashed wall during the opening show, caught fire before the more than 300 attendees. A handful fled the thick, black smoke, while the rest looked on, thinking the flames were part of the show.

After 20 minutes, the fire was extinguished and the remaining performances canceled. Organizers agreed the unexpected blaze provided better advertising than they could have planned themselves.

Mr. Pinchuk's interest in contemporary art dates back to 1993, when he began his collection. He established the Victor Pinchuk Foundation for Contemporary Art in Ukraine 10 years later, exhibiting "The First Collection" in Kyiv in 2003.

The following year, "Farewell to Arms" was exhibited in the former military-industrial site Arsenal, where he expected his future museum would be.

However, the Orange Revolution shifted the cultural agenda as President Viktor Yushchenko asserted his own plan for the Arsenal, namely a national museum of Ukrainian art, and Mr. Pinchuk's collection migrated to the Arena City complex.

The September inaugural exhibit, "New Space," was curated by Nicolas Bourriaud of France and Ukrainian Oleksander Solovyov; it includes the works of 20 artists, half of whom are Ukrainian.

In the museum's crisp white galleries, installations alternate with series of photographs, sculptures and paintings.

"Collected not through division and collision, but according to a principle of unifying integration, this exhibition reflects the general tendencies and characteristics that define contemporary artistic processes," Mr. Solovyov said.

The works by Ukrainian artists reflect their traditional strength in painting. Most of their pieces are two-dimensional, although they play with elements like scale and texture.

In "Dacha," Olexander Hnilitsky represents various objects stored in his summer home in realistic full size.

Oleh Kulik's circular photographs of floating bodies in "Lolita vs. Alice" make the figures appear three-dimensional as if they were swimming through fluid.

The international artists, meanwhile, oriented their work on installations, employing new technologies and media to stimulate viewers' senses and affect their physical experience of the space.

Dane Olafur Eliasson's "Inverted Shadow Tower" is a 5.5-meter-tall structure of 280 diamond-shaped lamps that gradually dim and brighten as the viewer's eyes adjust to the light, with the idea of having the viewer question the validity of his own visual perceptions.

German Carsten Holler's "Infrared Room" also teases viewers by projecting a video of the gallery like a surveillance tape onto the wall, only sometimes the video plays in sync with real time and sometimes with a slight delay.

The museum's design by French architect Philippe Chiambaretta both accommodates and enhances how viewers encounter the exhibition's works.

Even the bathrooms serve as art installations.

With three walls of the anteroom covered in mirrored glass (the fourth with wide colorful stripes), one can get lost in repeating reflections. Entering the bathroom itself, the visitor experiences an even more disorienting shock: the mirrored surface separating the women's room from the men's is semi-transparent, offering a view into the next room just beyond one's own reflection.

The sixth floor is an oasis of sleek elegance in contrast to Arena City's overdecorated exterior façade. In the café and media room, visitors can relax before Ukraine's largest plasma video screen or browse various contemporary art-related reading materials.

In minimalist white décor, the café serves coffee and cakes to discriminating patrons in expensive suits.

Guests saunter into the adjoining room and settle on white leather benches to peruse the latest issue of Artforum, watch videos, or stare out across the rooftops of Kyiv's ever-changing skyline.

The space also accommodates special lectures and presentations for students and the general public. The ceiling and some walls fold into jagged angles, adding another dimension to the space.

Occasional visible seams in the leather detailing or sloppy painting by a hurried construction crew don't detract from the impressive interior design, which also includes zigzagging metal tubes rising from the ground-floor entrance through the core of the staircase, ventilation grills punctured by dots and dashes reminiscent of binary code, and alcoves lined with colorful designer wallpaper.

The museum will show three to four exhibitions per year, the next one focusing entirely on Ukrainian artists.

With its fiery start, Mr. Pinchuk said he hopes the gallery will introduce modern ways of thinking to Ukrainians through the international language of contemporary art.

Fortunately, the latest trend in modern art museums - charging outrageous admission prices - still hasn't reached Kyiv. Admission to PinchukArtCentre is free.

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