PM Gallery

09.11. – 22. 11.2009

FUTURE WAS YESTERDAY

Patriotism

R.E.P. collective

Exhebition opening: November 9, 2009 at 7 pm

Curators  –  Loose Associations (Ivana Meštrov i Nataša Bodrožić)

Revolutionary Experimental Space (R.E.P.) is the artist collective from Kiev, Ukraine. It was created in the end of 2004 during the Orange Revolution. From the very beginning the Collective focused on the examination of means of communication in the public space. The language of “street democracy” and the representation of communities in the civic space have become the central themes of R.E.P.’s works.

The first project was carried out in the streets of Kiev during the “orange events”. Towards the end of 2005, the artists undertook a series of street actions in which they portrayed art as a political party that fights for the voters’ support. These actions were continued in 2006 under the joint title Intervention.

Patriotism is another of R.E.P.’s projects; as a project and the process at the same time, it develops the idea of a universal

language- Esperanto. Artists use a range of graphic symbols that refer to particular words and concepts in order to create visual tales in the form of murals. In Patriotism local issues become the topic of universal communication. The project aims to eliminate problems connected with translation. The project’s utopian objective entails the possibility of discussing differences in one common language.

Apart from the murals the artists always offer the viewer also a dictionary of symbols and meanings.

Through the “Patriotism” series, R.E.P. collective attempts to empty the term patriotism from its xenophobic and nationalistic connotations so that the concept becomes pure rhetorical form, which is then filled with the new internationalist content. This creates the universal “form of Esperanto,” which highlights the union of diversity.

Patriotism by R.E.P. is based on the tradition of monumental agitation, but without the hypnotic effect. The viewer needs to take some time to “read” and reconstruct the meaning of the message.

BIO:

“R. E. P.” group was founded in the end of 2004 in Kiev. Around twenty artists were members of R.E.P. group in 2004-2005. Since the beginning of 2006 R.E.P. group includes six artists: Lada Nakonechna, Lesia Khomenko, Nikita Kadan, Zhanna Kadyrova, Ksenia Gnylytska, Volodymyr Kuznetsov.