X - Marko Kolomytskyi

"X" - Cardboard with tape 220 x 120 x 7 cm + Print 30 x 42 cm
Price: 1000 euro

Availability: In stock

Edition of 2 + 2 AP

About the work: "A window covered with cardboard and adhesive tape, blocking the view, produces a sense of confinement that permeates the entire space. Titled X, this intervention draws from the improvised protections used in many Ukrainian apartments to lessen the effects of explosions. The gesture is simple, yet it immediately alters our perception of the space and displaces our points of reference. Beyond its direct reference to war, the work may also evoke the enclosed space of childhood, where the apartment shared with the artist’s mother could still appear as a heterotopia—a protected place, almost like a castle impossible to invade—but also another form of enclosure: that of an occupied territory, isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, the fate of his native region since 2014. In Marko Kolomytskyi’s work, these two dimensions constantly coexist: refuge and isolation become nearly inseparable."

Sasha Baydal on exhibition: "When leaving Alchevs’k, Donbas, Marko Kolomytskyi arranged for a large family archive spanning from the 1960s to 2026 to be evacuated. In the exhibition Maman sous cellophane, he presents a selection of images from 1995 to 2026 under the title ARCHIVE A3 (1995-2026). Wedding photographs, birthdays, walks, New Year celebrations, and ordinary scenes unfold before us. Gradually, an entire family history comes into view. Then something shifts. Beginning in 2014, photographs abruptly give way to administrative documents: bills, receipts, identity papers, certificates. It is as though the bureaucracy of war progressively invades the space of memory. The outside world enters directly into familial intimacy. It becomes impossible to maintain a clear separation between political history and everyday existence.

Looking closely at the series, one realizes that this intrusion had already been present beforehand, though in latent form. The artist subtly introduces political events that gradually announce the coming catastrophe: energy tensions and the so-called “gas wars” between Russia and Ukraine, presidential elections, military rhetoric, nuclear threats, and finally the outbreak of war in 2014. These elements pass through ordinary images before progressively overtaking the entire space through the bureaucracy of occupation."