KVOST opens the exhibition Dew in the Sun by the Ukrainian artist Olena Pronkina on September 14th as part of Berlin Art Week 2022. The Claus Michaletz Prize, which the artist won in 2022, will also be awarded at the opening of the exhibition.
Image above: Exhibition view KVOST Olena Pronkina, 2022, courtesy: KVOST, Berlin
Olena Pronkina‘s paintings show us parallel worlds that take root in our memory like ramified dreams. The colours, mostly muted, seem as if they have been exposed to a sandstorm. The pictures evoke memories of a bygone era – an attractive mixture – Florentine fresco painting crosses paths with images from the past East. With all the flower-bearing figures, “Die Ausgezeichnete” by Mattheuer comes to mind again.
In other images, the limbs of the bodies are overstretched. Shapeless, seemingly bloated bodies move through space, secured by an umbilical cord that seems to have no end.
That’s how it was until March 2022. Now it’s different. The pictures bear sadness. The green has approached black over time. The heads have become detached from the bodies, thrown into the world like dice in a game. Security is a thing of the past.
Ceramic heads have joined the paintings, this time lined up on pedestals, their eyes sometimes open, sometimes resting. In front of the exhibition wall, which is watery in pale blue and resembles the clear blue shortly after a sunrise, they seem to have escaped the dark grounds of the paintings, into a more hopeful time.
The title of the exhibition Dew in the Sun comes from the line “Our enemies will disappear, like the dew in the sun …” and thus refers to the poem by the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Chubynskyj, written as early as 1862, which was later set to music as the Ukrainian anthem.
“For me, ‘Dew in the Sun’ is a symbol of our country’s victory over evil, victory over the terror of the Russian invaders, because the dew inevitably disappears in the sun’s rays.”
OLENA PRONKINA
Olena Pronkina was awarded the KVOST STIPENDIUM in May 2022 and is the first scholarship holder to also receive the Claus Michaletz Prize of 10,000 euros offered by the Secco Pontanova Foundation.
She was born in Uzbekistan in 1988 and is of Ukrainian origin. Until Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, she lived and worked in Kiev. Like many artists, she fled to Lviv in the west of the country. Pronkina has been in Berlin since June 2022 and is working on her exhibition, which will open at KVOST during Berlin Art Week 2022.
WHEN?
Opening of the exhibition & award ceremony Claus Michaletz Prize: Wednesday 14 September 2022 – 7 to 9 pm
Exhibition duration: Thursday, 15 September to Saturday, 19 November 2022
Opening hours: Wed – Sat 2pm – 6pm
WHERE?
KVOST Kunstverein Ost e.V.
Leipziger Strasse 47
Eingang Jerusalemer Strasse
10117 Berlin-Mitte
