In March 1992, an exhibition “Calm” was held in the newly built exhibition hall of the Union of Artists on Gorky Street (where the French Cultural Center was located until recently). This project, on the one hand, served as a stimulus for a large exhibition of Ukrainian artists in Munich “Postanesthesia,” which took place in the fall of ’92, and on the other hand, it conditionally marked the transition of the New Wave generation to the final stage of its development. It was a fundamental exhibition that included not only Ukrainian artists but also the then “Moscow” Rostovites – Koshlyakov, Ter-Oganian, as well as Muscovites – the AES group and others. New Odessa names appeared at this exhibition – Igor Gusev with his work “Gift,” which combined the beginnings of painting and object art, Anatoliy Gankevich and Oleg Migas with their project “Food” – large pseudo-mosaic canvases quoting 17th-century Dutch still lifes. Even on a conscious, verbal level, the participants of the exhibition articulated a turn from the previous vector, a departure from the baroque whirlwind and transavant-garde storm. That is why the exhibition was called “Calm” – the art moved from neo-expressionism to a calmer, cooler stream, and the text for the exhibition bore a very symptomatic title – “Peaceful Art.”
Overall, the “Calm” exhibition concludes a significant stage in the life of Kyiv’s artistic squats. The artists continued to work for a couple of years afterward at the Paris Commune and around it, other squats appeared in the city, for example, “Cold Well,” a group on Olegovskaya Street, and at that time the movement with a postmodern ideological inclination – “Rays of Juche” – was born. But in the history of the New Wave, another significant turn occurred, and the last surge of its activity was a series of international exhibitions, which we will tell about in the next issue of our magazine.Comment type: Published comment
Author: Oleksandr Solovyov, Alisa Lozhkina
Sources: Solovyov A., Lozhkina A. Point Zero [Electronic resource] / A. Lozhkina, O. Solovyov // Contemporary History of Ukrainian Art. Part II. Generation at its Zenith. 1990 – mid-1992 / Alexander Solovyov, Alisa Lozhkina // Special project of TOP10 magazine – 2010. – Access mode to the resource: http://top10-kiev.livejournal.com/281049.html?thread=894681.
