We invite you to the opening of the exhibition "Metaphysics. Island” which will take place at the NT-Art Gallery on Friday, October 22, from 6 pm.

Picture: Lyudmila Yastreb "Street" Urban landscape

"Metaphysics. Island"- an exhibition of curators Oksana Dovgopolova, Natalka Revko and Kateryna Semenyuk on the rethinking of the "Odessa myth".

One day in a conversation on the streets of Odessa at night, Aleksandr Roytburd heard the phrase:

"Yes, you live here in a de Chirico landscape!".

It is difficult to see such a de Chirico, metaphysical face of Odessa. From the outside, its exotic, simulated image, described in the so-called Odessa myth with its obligatory "colour", tulle and pseudo-Jewish jokes, is guaranteed to be visible. Odessa has learned well to show just such a picture, which sells well.

But when you are suddenly blinded by the midday sun, you will see … an island on the border between the sea and the steppe. All this noisy nonsense does not disappear, but you also know the space of pure meanings, which introduces the exhibition "Metaphysics. Island". Then there is a pristine coastline, and on it - the island city. This is exactly the kind of Odessa we see in the works of Odessa artists of the 1960s and 1970s, who searched for this city out of time in a continuous polylogue with like-minded people.

Today, we ask ourselves: why do we suddenly see in these paintings the formulation of our questions about the modern city of Odessa? It's not about nostalgia, it's about the here and now.

Artists:

• Valentyn Altanets
• Valery Basanets
• Igor Bozhko
• Oleg Voloshinov
• Yuriy Yegorov
• Viktor Maryniuk
• Yevhen Rakhmanin
• Volodymyr Strelnikov
• Valentyn Khrushch
• Lyudmila Yastreb

Organizers:

• Past / Future Art Memory Culture Platform
• Forum Civil Peace Service - Ukraine
• Gallery of Contemporary Art NT-Art

The exhibition presents works from the collection of Anatoly Dymchuk, to whom the curators owe a partnership and the opportunity to work with the collection.

You can visit the exhibition from October 23 to November 27, 2021. The show is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 07pm. Free entrance!