It has become commonplace to state that the worldview of most Ukrainian citizens has changed since 2014. Those who were more patriotic received additional confirmation of their views. Others, who put aside the question of who is who realized the importance of self-identification. Probably, Serhiy Anufriev can be attributed to the latter. First of all, it became clear to him that his works of the first half of the 1980s in the Ukrainian language were not an accident. This and self-identification is the subject of Serhiy’s text, which he prepared for the opening of the exhibition “Traces to the Future” on May 2, 2023, at WEartMuseum / Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art with the support of the Resilience Gallery and, of course, with the participation of the MOOMA team.

TRACES TO THE FUTURE

The innovation of my project is that I have found a language of expression that is ideally suited to make a transition (translation) similar to the transition from photography to cinema.

This is the Ukrainian language, which is really the most suitable for expressing procedural sequences and event series.

The symbolic and metamorphic properties of this language perfectly correspond to the goals and objectives of transgressive deduction, unlike, say, English, which is more in line with the reductionist vector of conceptualism. This is how Ukrainian Conceptualism emerged, a project that has been waiting for 40 years to transform into a school and then into a trend in contemporary art.

Let’s use the work of Maidan as an example. After its creation in 2015, the work was exhibited at the Art Barricades during the Odesa “Prosecutor’s Maidan” and then in the Summer Theater of the City Garden, which was reclaimed by the city from fictitious owners. In the course of the battle for the Summer Theater, the painting was thrown into a landfill.

In 2016, the work was found in a pile of garbage, restored and put on display again in the Eizenlab laboratory of contemporary art.

In 2022, the work was acquired by the MOOMA collection.

The fate of this work, its symbolic death and revival clearly demonstrate the subject of interest in the Ukrainian Concept. The transformations of this work after its creation are only IMPORTANT as its idea, form and content. His life is the subject of expression for Ukrainian Conceptualism.

Art as destiny.

Art after the Author.

Therefore, the works of Ukrainian Conceptualism belong more to the viewer than to the author.

This is the main difference from the rest of conceptual art.

Another name for this art is PRESET ART.

In the sense that it

PRESUPPOSES

Serhiy Anufriev

27.04.2023