
Rendezvous with nEUROPA


wul. Pylypa Orlyka 7, Iwano-Frankiwsk, Ukraine

Eintritt bzw. Teilnahme kostenlos

Eintritt bzw. Teilnahme kostenlos
“nEUROPA” is a play on the words “neu” and “EUROPA”, which outlines the geographical focus of the work of the gallery of the same name in Dresden and its supporting organisation Kultur Aktiv e.V.. The gallery and association are dedicated to cultural exchange with artists from the countries of the former Eastern Bloc in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
For over 10 years, there have been close contacts between artists from the Kultur Aktiv association and artists from Ivano-Frankivsk, which led to the first exhibition of the “Kolumb” photo club in Dresden in 2014. Since then, there have been several joint projects. We took the ten-year anniversary of our collaboration as an opportunity to organise two exhibitions in parallel.
The “Kolumb” photo club is currently presenting itself in Dresden with the exhibition “Identifikazia – Identity – Identification”. In turn, three photographers from the nEUROPA gallery team are showing their view of “nEUROPA” in the exhibition “Rendezvous with nEUROPA” at the Vagabundo art space in Ivano-Frankivsk. In this respect, the title of the exhibition is to be understood in both senses of the word “nEUROPA”.
Simon Wolf worked for many years as managing director of Kultur Aktiv and has travelled to Ukraine several times since 2013. In his photo series “Sidewalk Art”, he compiles everyday street scenes from Odesa, Lviv, Uzhorod, Kyiv and other cities with details from the roadside.
The settlements of Verkhovyna and Krivoryvnya are at the centre of the series by the two photojournalists Matthias Schumann and Jan Oelker. Inspired by Sergei Parajanov’s film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, they observe what remains of the Hutsul traditions in the modern everyday life of the Carpathian settlements.
In further photo series, Matthias Schumann searches for traces in the settlement “Kolonia” in Lypivka, which was formerly inhabited by Germans, and Jan Oelker documents the phenomenon of half-finished buildings along the EU border in the Sakarpaty region in the series “Schlossallee”, whose construction progress bears witness to the respective liquidity of the extended families.
Curation: Jan Oelker, Matthias Schumann, Simon Wolf