PATRIOT GAMES / UKRAINIAN GOTHIC: The newest photo-project of Boris Myhailow and Mykola Ridny
06.09.2007 — 17.09.2007

Kyiv, the 6th of September 2007, 18.00 - the gallery "Collection" opens the exhibition season with the newest series of the photos of the famous Boris Mihailow and young and intriguing Mykola Ridny.

The projects will present two photographical series: "Patriot Games" of Mykhailow and Ridny and "Ukrainian Gothic" of Ridny.

The series "Patriot Games" is a form of artistic reflection upon the political reality of the modern Ukraine and the apprehension of this reality by an ordinary Ukrainian who soon from a simple citizen will turn into almighty elector.

The art director of the gallery "Collection" Oleg Baishew comments "Patriot Games": "On the photos Mykhailow and Ridny in blue and orange leotards are grimacing, hitting each other and suddenly a braid appears in the camera lens and the heroes are hugging each other and snuggling. The artists hint at the absurd of the Ukrainian politicum, meaningless fights and sometimes too obvious similarity of the interests. But if you look deeper, the photographs turn out to be not so obvious. The game is taking place between the "old" well-heeled artist with a great international experience and "young" talented pupil. Their relations and mutual influences, tangling of their views, questions, who needs whom and who owes whom, are on the bet in the project of Mykhailow and Ridny. But such interpretation is also not final. The images of this series show an allegoric conversation of two patriots: "internal Ukrainian" and "emigrant". People that live in completely different contexts can find a mutual theme for a conversation, discussion or an argument only in politics. And only here they can feel some sort of unity." Mykola Ridny in his project "Ukrainian Gothic" touches not only formal artistic but also social questions. He makes photos of teenagers - the pupils of vocational schools, the adepts of the youth's sub-culture "gothic", demonstrating a strange combining of western culture phenomena with local post-soviet culture. In his author's conception Ridny writes: "… "The life environment" of this trend sub-cultures still has the prints of soviet times in the external expressions and in the mass consciousness. The paradox of the picture we become as the result is that the current sub-culture that uses new definitions and symbols is acting in the soviet decorations with the picturesque entourage of the Ukrainian patriotism".

The project "Patriot Games/Ukrainian Gothic" will last till the 18th of September. The official drink of the official opening of the exhibition is the fine cognac Akhtamar (ArArAt).