SHILO GROUP
Sergiy Lebedynsky, Vlad Krasnoshchok, Vadym Trykoz
Artists presented by Krzysztof Candrowicz
Since the beginning of their collective work, the artists associated as Shilo Group have been strongly focused on cultural and political issues in Ukraine. Rapid social changes in the country became a motor and inspiration for most of their projects. In a few years of working together they created their own visual language. It is an experimental and poetic manifest to where past mixes with present and future.
Together Sergiy, Vlad and Vadym have constructed a unique approach combining documentary photography with personal, artistic, or political statements.
Krzysztof Candrowicz
Our photography focuses on social issues in our homeland,Ukraine, primarily the legacy of its Soviet past. Rapid change subsequent to the collapse of the Soviet Union and in dependence produced extreme disparities in life style and culture. The majority could not adapt to the new system.
They had to focus on day to-day survival, not moving forward. The country is now stuck between its Soviet past and an uncertain present. What will our future be? That is the question we are trying to answer by digging into the past, unsealing people’s fears, trying to reason them out of their absurdities and illogical behavior. Using darkroom process with printing and outdated Soviet photographic paper, whose combined results are unpredictable, we produce archival-seeming prints showing the historical significance of rapid change in Ukraine. The exhibition will include three series of photographs. In Negatives AreStored, old photographs are ‘resurrected’ by our surgery; Euromaidan shows recent protests in Kiev, an allegory of the Ukrainian people in search of something; ATO (anti terrorist operation) shows Eastern Ukraine one year after Euromaidan.
Shilo Group
Prints by Processus, Paris.
Untitled, from the Euromaidan series, Kyiv ,2014. Courtesy of Sergiy Lebedynskyy (Shilo Group).
Untitled, from the Negatives Are Stored series, 2012. Courtesy of Vlad Krasnoshchok (Shilo Group).