Contemporary art gallery Pinchuk Art Center (self-styled PinchukArtCentre) in downtown Kyiv has resumed its work after shutting down in early March, when Ukraine imposed the coronavirus quarantine. The new exhibition starts on July 28.
The exhibition will display works of 20 artists nominated for the 6th annual Pinchuk Art Center Art Prize, a nationwide prize in contemporary art for young Ukrainian artists under 35.
The exhibition will be held on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors of the building on 1/3-2 Velyka Vasylkivska Street, from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday–Sunday.
The gallery will take measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. For example, there’s a limit for the number of visitors, allowing under 100 guests at a time. For the same purpose, the art center puts all tours and public events on hold.
Pinchuk Art Center also requires visitors to wear face masks, undergo temperature checks at the entrance to the museum, and ask them to keep 1.5-meter distance. As for the usual line that forms outside the gallery at busy hours, the art center couldn’t immediately comment as to whether it will manage the distancing in the line.
This same exhibition had started in February 2020 but was suspended after the COVID-19 outbreak. Now it is renewing and will close only in January 2021.
The participants of the exhibition are artists AntiGonna, Katya Вuchatska, Uli Golub, Pavlo Grazhdanskij, Ksenia Hnylytska, Alexandra Kadzevich, Nikolay Karabinovych, Anton Karyuk, Oksana Kazmina, Iryna Kudrya, Larion Lozovoy, Timothy Maxymenko, Elias Parvulesco, Valentina Petrova, Anna Scherbyna, Alina Sokolova and Dmytro Starusiev.
The visitors can also see the works of 12345678910 Studio, Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Himey, Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy.
The art center works without mediators, who lost their jobs after a conflict with the administration of the art center. The mediators complained about the violation of their labor rights, saying they were forced to work without paid sick leaves and vacations.
When they formed a labor union to defend their rights, Pinchuk Art Center fired them all. The center denied that they fired its staffers because of the labor union, however.
After that, Bjorn Geldhof, artistic manager at Pinchuk Art Center, claimed that the gallery would now use another format, combining free excursions and audio guides for each artistic work.
