Fragmente einer Wirklichkeit, die einmal war.

In the organizer's words:

With Sergey Anufriev, Volodymyr Budnikov, Mykola Filatov, Sergey Geta, Evgeni Gordiets, Eduard Gorochovskij, Ilya Kabakov, Andrij Kocka, Yuri Leiderman and Andrey Silvestrov, Jurij Luckevič, Petro Markovič, Anatolij Mašarov, Daniel Mitljanskij, Vera Morozova, Halyna Neledva, Oleh Petrenko, Arkadij Petrov, Larisa Rezun-Zvezdočetova, Viktor Ryžich, Lyudmila Skypkina, Oleksandr Tyšler and Leonid Vojcechov

The Ludwig Forum for International Art houses around 1800 paintings, sculptures and prints from the former Soviet Union and Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, which Irene and Peter Ludwig collected between 1979 and 1996. Fragments of a Reality That Once Was is the prelude to a reassessment, relocation and exploration of parts of this collection that have been inventoried in the past under the heading "Art from the USSR" and about which there is still little information available today. In addition, these works and artistic positions will be re-contextualized in line with current art and cultural studies discourses, thereby critically questioning the Western view of "Eastern European art". This first exhibition of the research project of the same name examines a collection of artistic works that are connected to Ukraine in different ways. It attempts to revise blurred categorizations, terminologies and contextualizations - be they geographical, political or art-historical - in order to do justice to the diversity and complexity of a region marked not least by tensions and violence.

The first room of the exhibition, in which works from the 1970s and 80s are presented that at first glance appear to belong to the classical modernism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, shows that we need to change our viewing habits. They were created in response to the doctrine of Socialist Realism, which stipulated that the arts should only serve the progress of socialist society. Against this backdrop, the seemingly anachronistic paintings of rural idylls such as Family in the Donbass (1970) by Arkadij Petrov and Gurzuf (1972) by Jurij Luckevič unfold their emancipatory potential. The escape into the private sphere and to remote places, beyond the reach of the central government, was characteristic of the subversive undermining of art doctrine. In a conscious rejection of official efforts to standardize all artistic production under the banner of communism, the retreat into the private sphere and the recourse to national patriotic motifs within the individual Soviet republics were typical forms of artistic resistance, albeit defensive ones.

The exhibition also focuses on the legacy of the "Russian avant-garde". On display are paintings by Oleksandr Tyšler from the 1960s and 70s, which reveal the universal character of the avant-garde and the subsequent metaphysical-figurative painting of the early 20th century, whose aesthetic and revolutionary programs became an important point of reference for many subsequent artists in the Soviet era. The large-format paintings Angelsaison (1989) and Ende der Vorstellung (1987) by Leonid Vojcechov are in turn exemplary of a visual language that was widespread in Ukrainian contemporary art at the end of the 1980s, which, among other things, dealt ironically with the Soviet Union, which was already in the process of dissolution.

The eight-part screen print series Games (1983) by Eduard Gorochovskij can also be seen in this light. The starting point of the series is the photographic portrait of an aristocratic couple. The artist places the figures, frozen in their pose, in various contemporary situations where they play their roles impassively, whether as athletes, flight attendants or at a press conference. The "total and absolute ignorance of the people in the old photograph of the fact that they have become the subject of a complex, sophisticated and invented game", as Ilya Kabakov wrote, is always also an expression of rigid social conventions, which the artist questions. The critical examination of traditional role models can also be heard in the assemblage Nature and Fantasy (1990) by Larisa Rezun-Zvezdočetova. Together with Leonid Vojcechov and Yuri Leiderman, the latter was part of the unofficial art scene in Odessa in the 1980s, which organized actions and exhibitions in private studios, apartments or in nature. The Ukrainian-born Ilya Kabakov, co-founder of Moscow Conceptualism, was associated with this art scene. In his work In the Corner (1977-1988), he thematizes emptiness, which was of great symbolic importance in view of the omnipotence of the state and the scarcity of social freedom. In their video work Odessa. Fragment 205 (2015), Yuri Leiderman and Andrey Silvestrov take up the history of Odessa and questions of identification as Ukrainians based on two important artists: Valentin Khrushch and Oleg "Pepper" Petrenko. The exhibition also documents other actions and protagonists who were involved in the unofficial art scene in Odessa in the 1980s.

The various artistic encounters in and with Ukraine in the Ludwig Collection make it clear that we are faced with the challenge of only ever looking back at fragments of a reality that once was. Instead of clear categorizations - such as conformist and non-conformist art - or national attributions, the contextualizing survey also brings to bear intermediate spaces and ambiguities. The research project, which aims to re-examine the collection's holdings, which are generally referred to as "Eastern European art", focuses on collections that Peter and Irene Ludwig acquired behind the Iron Curtain and that have been little researched and rarely exhibited to date. The classification systems and narratives associated with them are to be subjected to a revision, towards an alternative terminology and in the sense of a decolonization of historiography, in order to take into account in particular the diversity of the individual cultural areas within the former USSR and the other former Eastern Bloc countries.

Curated by Galina Dekova
Research traineeship at Kunstmuseen NRW "Collection focus: Eastern Europe"

With the generous support of the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

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