Odessa Fine Art Museum (OFAM) announced the winner of the OFAM WALL competition. It was the artist Roman Minin from Kharkov, who created the panel "Hands of Eternity".

The OFAM WALL competition began on March 1: the museum announced its search for an artwork to put on the wall above the stairs to the second floor. The work should become a kind of portal to the updated exposition of contemporary art, which was recently presented.

The purpose of the competition for museum staff was also to go beyond the established image of the Ukrainian museum as a closed and conservative institution: to start an open dialogue with all participants in the art scene.

Projects were considered without restrictions in technology and media. The prize fund of the competition was 180 thousand hryvnias; these funds were collected by the members of the Marazli Club, the association of patrons of OFAM. A total of 132 applications came to the competition.

The jury of the competition included the director of OFAM Alexander Roitburd, the Head of the scientific department Kirill Lipatov, art critics Olga Balashova and Alexander Soloviev, the representative of the Marazli Club Alexander Vernik. On July 6, the Odessa Artistic Center named five best projects:

• panel "Hands of Eternity" by Roman Minin,
• audiovisual installation "Where are your big ears, dear dead grandmother?" by Katya Libkind,
• video installation "Presence" by Anna Mironova,
• installation "I Can't Get Out of Here" by Sergei Petlyuk,
• digital painting "The Temptation of St. Anthony" by Stepan Ryabchenko.

The winner Roman Minin was born in 1981 in Dimitrov, but lives in Mirnograd, Donetsk region. Received art education in Kharkov, graduate of the department of monumental painting of the Kharkov State Academy of Design and Arts. Works in different techniques: painting, graphics, photography, installations and objects, street art.

The winning work is a panel of eight parts, 200 x 420 cm. The author explains it as “the search for archetypes and authentic modern symbols of Ukraine at the level of the cultural code”.

The panel will be installed in the exposition of the Odessa Art Museum in July-August of this year.