Looking into the Gaps IV

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Looking into the Gaps is an exhibition cycle that approaches the history and present of Ukrainian art as an ornament of ruptures, losses, and absences, in which what exists serves merely as a frame for what is missing. 

The cycle consists of separate chapters, previously presented at Voloshyn Gallery in Kyiv (2024); the Artsvit and DCCC spaces in Dnipro (2025); ART FRONT Gallery in Tokyo, Japan (2026); as well as landscape exhibitions in Sokołowsko (Poland), Berlin (Germany), and on the island of Teshima in Japan. The aim of the cycle is to reflect on the process of moving along a conscious path composed largely of obstacles, and on the construction of a coherent narrative that breaks off again and again.

The central motif of the Lviv part of the project, presented at Jam Factory Art Center, is the theme of loneliness and the relationship between the “I” and the “we” as shaped by the experience of war.

Artists

Andrii Boyko, Andrij Bojarov, Andriy Sahaidakovsky, Anton Saenko, Attila Hazhlinsky, Bohdan Sokur, Bogdana Kosmina, Vasyl Tkachenko (Lyakh), Vesela Naydenova, Vladislav Plisetskiy, Vova Vorotniov, Halyna Zhehulska, Davyd Chychkan, Dana Kavelina, Zhanna Kadyrova, Zoriana Kozak, Illia Todurkin, Kateryna Yermolayeva, Katya Kopeikina, Ksenia Hnylytska, Maya Nikolaieva, Marharyta Polovinko, Maria Prymachenko, Marta Syrko, Myroslav Yahoda, Mykhaylo Palinchak, Nikita Kadan, Oleg Holosiy, Oleg Perkowsky, Oleksandr Hnylytskyi, Olia Yeriemieieva, Pavlo Bedzir, Pavlo Kovach, Pavlo Makov, Sasha Dolhyi, Sevilâ Nariman-qızı, Sergey Anufriev, Stanislav Turina, Fedir Tetianych, Yuriy Bolsa, Yuriy Izdryk, Yuri Leiderman, Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei, Yaroslav Futymskyi.

Project architect: Bogdana Kosmina

Curatorial word

“We did not really like looking into the distance. Rather, sideways, into the gap. Like the perspective of those darling streets that always diverge at right angles. We did not interpret; we did not even “practice”, we simply loitered.’ — Yuri Leiderman, “Those Who Loitered in the Surf”

The history of Ukrainian art is a torn history and, at the same time, a history of gaps. Interrupted narratives, destroyed works, repressed authors, loud silence, rewriting the past according to the new dominant ideology, tragedies of conformism and virtuosity of self-justification, breaking oneself over the knee, changing sides in the middle of an argument, changing names halfway through, dissociative identity. Or martyrdom through self-immolation, followed by turning the ashes into bronze. And bronze is known to steal the meaning from ashes every time.

Is it possible to wander the landscape of catastrophe? Are there flankers in the bloody lands? The answer to this exhibition is affirmative.

The dignity of living on the periphery, without an eager gaze directed to the centre, to the metropolis. The lack of any certainty about one’s own historical prospects. Leiderman speaks of ‘Ukrainian horizontal kinship, non-hierarchical ties’ and ‘a number of cultural provinces – Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Kharkiv – that do not need a centre, they just stand side by side’**. Art in the provinces can be ‘elusive Joe’ while in the metropolis it turns into career springboards or monumental columns and towers of ‘big culture’.

But the province is also the cradle of madness. Ideas that in more central places could turn into unshakable pedestals for their creators here become the clamorous garb of a urban madmen. Something like Tetianych’s spacesuits made of garbage and foil.

Let’s imagine a museum, one of the Ukrainian museums, where a seemingly chaotic collection of artworks turns into a clear history of gaps of the logics that could otherwise unite and historicise these works. Where the lack of connection between historical situations makes the present fluid, unreliable and extremely open.

What to do when your native periphery suddenly becomes a place where the fate of the world is decided? And an even more complicated question: what if it suddenly ceases to be this place?

This exhibition is about the ways of looking at art, determined by the terrific and funny circumstances of Ukrainian life. This exhibition can be read as a project of a museum in which the desire to claim power through writing history has already failed. Or as an unstable system in which “classical,” “contemporary,” “marginal,” “popular” authors find themselves outside their usual niches and positions in the classification. Like a moving landscape of art that instantly makes any map obsolete. Or as a story about the stolen past, recreated by its shadows and echoes – with full readiness for these shadows and echoes to deceive you and lead you astray

.…

The work on the fourth chapter of the exhibition began with reflections on the relationship between”we” and “I” in times of war. The necessity of self-restraint and its forms, (dis)agreement with new external restrictions, the role of self-censorship and mutual surveillance are topics that are not open to debate, as different positions on them cannot coexist peacefully in a single field. From these dilemmas, cracks emerge into which relationships and prospects for coexistence fall.

Yet further reflection led to something simpler — the theme of loneliness in a world permeated by war and newly normalized.

And then, link by link, a whole chain of loneliness formed. From loneliness in a constantly compulsively rewritten history or loneliness within a social agreement, constantly betrayed by collective habit; loneliness between the narcissism of the “cultural front” and the absoluteness of what the real front takes away; loneliness in the need to preserve and the demand to sacrifice. And finally — between the realization that the question of loneliness is deeply irrelevant, and the moment when the repressed questions return to visibility relentlessly and painfully.

And back to the beginning — to the insoluble remnant of “we,” to those purified forms of the common without which everything would be lost.”

Nikita Kadan

OPENING HOURS AND TICKET PRICES

Exhibition schedule: February 21, 2026 – May 17, 2026
Opening hours: Mon – closed, Tue-Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-20:00

Tickets can be purchased at the Art Center’s reception. Every Tuesday, entry is free for all visitors.

Tickets: 200 UAH

Half-price tickets for schoolchildren, students, internally displaced persons and senior citizens.

Free entrance for children under 7 years old, people with disabilities, veterans, military personnel, students of the Academies of Arts, Trush College, and Lviv cultural studies departments.

The exhibition operates during power outages.