We are announcing a solo exhibition by Vitaliy Kokhan, in which the artist collects or creates artefacts of today’s reality and sets the path for the future. Kohan does not refer to his works as sculptures, but rather as objects. He focuses on the material and its potential functionality as opposed to volume. The function of this exhibition is memorialisation and documentation, embodied through the permanence of stones and carved text, as well as three-dimensional marble pieces, wooden and metal objects.
“I unconsciously make what is missing. It seems that few objects have survived. And I want something reliable—to find such approaches in the past and recreate them. Like these seemingly cheerless stone plaques have an inspirational message—it’s a solid medium and they are actually aimed at the future. There is no ambition here to keep the object intact, but rather a desire to make something lasting, not made of cardboard.”
Vitaliy Kokhan
The perception of material as a part of artistic language is an influence of Kharkiv, where Kokhan lived for 15 years. While in this city he tried to find one medium that would explain everything (for a long time it was concrete), in Kyiv the artist uses stone, wood, and metal, combining them like words in a sentence.
Many of the works in the exhibition were conceptually, or even physically, created by the artist before the full-scale invasion. However, he has now reinterpreted them through the materials chosen and the context in which each object was completed. For example, the pine ‘obelisk’—the embodiment of Kokhan’s minimalist approach to form and expression—no longer evokes peaceful associations but instead refers to the forests where military operations take place daily. Yet, the exhibition is neither suppressive nor uplifting—like life today, it captures different states of being.
“For us, Vitaliy Kokhan’s practice is always somewhat about returning to the basics of art, such as the attention to fragility and beauty of everyday life, or admiration for the rough primordiality of materials found in urban environments, or those that are generally considered artistic. These categories may seem inappropriate now (are there any categories of beauty in art?), yet they remain urgent. We are in a time of resetting the foundations in all dimensions of life, perhaps in art as well.”
Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko
