Blind Spot: Yuriy Biley, Mykola Ridnyi, Johanna Tinzl

25 04 – 30 09 2023
Museum of Modern Art building windows, Gallery 9:16, CEAD.space

The term “blind spot” comes from ophthalmology and refers to a small area on the retina of the human eye where an image is formed. The blind spot prevents its integrity – part of it must always be invented, constructed, or imagined. This “little lie” underlying human perception is a good metaphor for our normal movement within society, learning, orienting, forming an opinion, and sharing it. The FORUM programme line-up features a trio of prominent Central European personalities who have been working on shared social blind spots for a long time – be it the consumption of media images, the formation of social rules, or the communication of personal dilemmas. At the same time, the project attempts to bridge another similar spot – opening the traditional state institution to the public space, its uncertainty, and hecticness – and awaits its own echo.

WE’LL MEET AGAIN
25 04 2023–15 07 2023, Gallery 9:16, CEAD.space, windows

The project reflects on the intimate relationships of Yuriys family, which has long been divided due to his life in Poland. Naturally, they gained in intensity after the outbreak of war with Russia on 24 February 2022, all the more so as his younger brother is actively participating in it. The trio of chapters deals with the intercommunication of all family members. The first is dedicated to the brother – it is presented in a film entitled Write at Least Once a Day, in which the author reads from their correspondence. (CEAD.point) The second, entitled Homeland, reflects on Yuriys lifelong relationship with his father – and relies on a series of sensitively selected objects with which the authors memories and experiences are linked. (Gallery 9:16) The final chapter, My Mother‘s Photos, then presents a series of floral arrangements of Yuriys mother. (Windows) The intimacy and concentration of the messages contrast sharply with the absence of „real“ contact, making the dilemmas associated with personal emigration poignantly present.

2022-, video, photoprint, objects, text
* originally part of the United exhibition presenting a selection of artists associated with the PinchukArtCentre 2022 award (curator: Oleksandra Pogrebnyak)

Visual artist and curator Yuriy Biley (1988, Uzhhorod) graduated from the National Academy of Arts in Lviv in 2011. Since 2015 he has been living and working in Wroclaw, Poland. His work focuses on current socio-political events, including the issue of emigration. Most of his projects are based on personal experiences. He is interested in text and the influence of language as a cultural or self-identifying factor. He is a co-founder of Open Group (2012), whose artistic practice reflects the concept of "collective work". In 2013 Open Group won the special prize of PinchukArtPrize (Kiev) and in 2015 the main prize. In 2015, he participated in the 56th edition as a member of the association. La Biennale di Venezia. Two years later, Open Group took full care of the Ukrainian pavilion. Biley is also the curator and co-founder of two galleries, Detenpyla in Lviv (since 2011) and NEW GOLD in Wroclaw (since 2019). He has had numerous solo exhibitions (Museum of Emigration in Gdynia and BWA Zielona Góra in 2022; Labirynt gallery Lublin in 2021, etc.), as well as collective ones (among others. Miguel Abreu in New York, PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv, Raster Gallery in Warsaw, all 2022; National Museum of Art in Kyiv, 2021; Museum of Contemporary Art in Wrocław, 2020; Museum of Contemporary Art in Kherson, 2019; Ludwig Museum in Budapest, 2018; Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, 2015, etc.). It is represented in the collections of the Labirynt Gallery in Lublin, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kherson, and in private collections.

BLIND SPOT
25 04 2023–15 07 2023, Gallery 9:16

The title of Mykola Ridnyis work is borrowed from ophthalmology. A blind spot is a small area on the retina that prevents a complete image from its forming. Usually, we rely on our own knowledge and memory to complete it, without considering that we are constantly constructing reality as such. Ridnyi uses this concept as a metaphor for a society in a state of media war. He takes images from the media and news reporting on the war taking place in eastern Ukraine, intervenes manually, most often with black ink, and artificially re-constitutes the blind spot in them. This work is a critical statement about the mechanical acceptance of reality as established by the media and the social blindness imposed by war propaganda, which creates a polarised vision of reality, dividing society into “us” and “them”, “ours” and “theirs”. It is not for nothing that it is said that the first casualty of war is the truth – regardless of what we actually think it is.

2014-2015, spray acrylic on c-print, pen on paper

Mykola Ridnyi (1985, Kharkiv), who is already well known to the Olomouc audience thanks to last years MUO-SEFO programme entitled Cinema Central Europe, is an artist, filmmaker, and curator. In 2008 he graduated from the National Academy of Design and Art in Kharkiv. He is a founding member of the art collective SOSka group. He uses a variety of media, from site-specific installations and sculptures to photography and experimental film. His work straddles cinema and contemporary art, combining documentary and performative approaches. His work has been featured in exhibitions and film festivals, including Transmediale at HKW Berlin (2019), the 35th Kassel Documentary Film Festival (2018), The Image of War at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm (2017), All the Worlds Futures at 56. Venice Biennale (2015), The School of Kyiv – Kyiv Biennale (2015), etc.

BACK TO VIENNA – Body Adaptations in Public Spaces
27 07–30 09 2023, Gallery 9:16, windows

The large-format photographic triptych – created as a selection from an original set of nine photographs depicting Helga Pollak-Kinsky – brings themes from Pollak-Kinskys turbulent life into the public space of Olomouc, imaginatively returning her to the wider space of Central Europe. Johanna captures Pollak-Kinsky in its cultural center, Vienna, in places that were crucial to her life – both before her escape from Austria in 1938 to the Moravian town of Kyjov, or deportation to Terezín and then Auschwitz, and after her return to the country in 1957. Together with Johanna, she began to systematically revisit them, reviving not only her memories but also her current relationships and connections. Inspired by the photographic series Configurations of the Body, which VALIE EXPORT created between 1972 and 1976, Johanna additionally reflected on the presence and representation of the female body in the public space of the city and in society in general. Moreover, and this should be emphasized, she did so deliberately at the time of the global pandemic Covid-19, which in its entirety also thematized the problem of aging, or its massive marginalization in Western (post)capitalist society.

2020, photographs

The Austrian visual artist Johanna Tinzl (1976, Innsbruck) studied sculpture at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and transmedia art at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she also headed the studio for spatial design from 2017 to 2022. In 2015, she was a Red Gate Residency Fellow in Beijing, China, and in 2015-2011 she participated in a residency in Charleroi, Belgium. In 2010 she received a bm:ukk Start grant, and three years later she was awarded the Paul Flory Prize (together with Stefan Flunger). She has been collaborating with key Austrian institutions (Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs, MUMOK, MAK, Vienna Kunsthalle, etc.) for a long time, presenting not only at home but also abroad. Her work is based on a sensitive, often participatory engagement within specific communities or localities. She is particularly interested in the performativity of historical narratives and the visualization of precarious moments of the "political" in everyday life. She integrates her extensive research into performative or installation formats that include a wide range of media, video, sound, object, or text. Observation and the accumulation of information, including its critical evaluation, are fundamental to her work. Using both fictional and documentary approaches, her work is traditionally polyphonic, constantly re-evaluating, and challenging monolithic fabrications of cultural history.

Yuriy Biley, Mykola Ridnyi, Johanna Tinzl: Blind Spot
Pop-up exhibition – in cooperation with AFO and Gallery XY
Location: Museum of Modern Art building windows, Gallery 9:16, CEAD.space
Opening hours: 24/7
date: 25 04 – 30 09 2023