Korsak Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art. Art Project "Kyiv Island"

A large-scale art project at the Korsak Museum!

On April 3 at 17:00, the project "Kyiv Island" will open at the Korsak Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art.

The exhibition is dedicated to the phenomenon of the "Squat on Olehivska" — a unique community of artists that emerged in the early 1990s and became an important part of the "New Ukrainian Wave."

This exhibition is about an environment that became a territory of freedom. About artists who managed to preserve painting as a space of strength, play, paradox, and inner independence. About art that has endured time and silence and returned with renewed energy.

The exhibition features works by:
Anatolii Varvarov, Volodymyr Yershykhin, Ihor Konovalov, Serhii Korniievskyi, Ruslan Kutniak, Ed Potapenkov, Volodymyr Padun, Liudmyla Rozdobudko-Padun, Kostiantyn Militynskyi, Volodymyr Zaichenko, Viacheslav Mashnytskyi.

Exhibition dates: 03.04–12.07.2026

We look forward to seeing you on Friday, April 3 at 17:00!

Free admission to the event!

Korsak Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art,
Lutsk, 1 Ivana Korsaka Street.

Additionally about the squat

"History accelerates… Time is at our heels…"
Mark Augé. Non-Place

Age is not a criterion of greatness, but it guarantees a насыщеність (richness) of significance.

The group "Artists from Olehivska" has existed longer than any Ukrainian group, squat, or movement… Three decades—longer than some states. The "Olehivtsi" themselves became a kind of honorable "state within a state," whose members were largely non-Kyiv, "from elsewhere". Since then, Kyiv can no longer be imagined without them, regardless of how much has changed.

It is a shame that the 1990s remain in public memory as a time of rampant banditry — because it was also the "golden age" of national art. A happy paradox: that "age" managed to leap over the Millennium, slip into the 2000s, stretch out in the 2010s, and continue further and further.

All of this—thanks to the eleven artists presented today—is clear proof of the above.

Olehivska? A narrow, archaic, old street — but not ancient: it has existed in Kyiv since around the mid-19th century. Until recently, almost rustic in its fragrant atmosphere, it connected sleepy Lukianivka with the busy, noisy, somewhat pretentious Podil. A two-story building sheltered several apartments, workshops, and soon the surrounding area became the stage for a number of resonant actions. Then came fellow travelers, art critics, sympathizers, and adherents…

It is not the first time that a geographical coordinate has become a full-fledged art marker — recall Barbizon and the "Paris Commune" — but it is rare for a spatial factor to transform into a true equivalent of freedom, becoming a sign of free thinking and liberated artistic behavior.

(Hills and slopes became ethereally overgrown with mysterious cubes, flared up with fiery patterns… cheerful hares began to jump across canvases, pink helicopters rattled…

By the way, the motif of unrestrained movement, at least a dynamic vector, is one of the most persistent in the work of our artists. Even an installation object somehow took shape as an elongated boat… in the middle of a green wasteland.)

Remarkably, having experienced all the whims of a treacherous fate, the "Olehivtsi" developed an immunity to fashionable cynicism (which somewhat tarnished the reputation of some related groups). Almost every painting of theirs feels like an exclamation of sincere — seemingly naive — delight in the wonders of the world. At the same time, one cannot call them idyllic: they are absolutely contemporary, highly ironic people, seasoned by experience, who have gone through fire, water, and the brass pipes of contemporary art, and emerged not unscathed, but considerably strengthened.

They absorbed video performance — but never abandoned painting.

Let us learn from the "Olehivtsi": to respect the painting—its color, taste, and even its smell. No pictorial paradox, no Borgesian twist of plot, no non-figurative mastery cancels this imperative—nor the viewer’s spellbound fascination with the "pictorial, all too pictorial." The honor and dignity of which the "Olehivtsi" have revived almost from the ashes, giving it breathtaking, unexpected forms.

A rare example of interaction: more than once, our artists painted together on a single surface, creating bizarre symbioses of personal fantasies. Not just in pairs — but in fours.

("Amaze me," Cocteau once tested newcomers. I believe our artists would never have been threatened by such a test.)

Let us learn the ability to "wait and not be tired by waiting." The "Olehivtsi" are the only creative group today that, having survived a period of silence — which from the outside could be perceived as an "exit from the game"— managed, upon returning to the artistic forefront, to find not just a "second," but a "third breath." With today’s exhibition at the Korsak Museum — almost a "fourth"…

The "Olehivtsi" are children of a cumulative effect. A long silence suddenly turns into a prominence…

An explosion so much like a triumph.

Oleh Sydor-Hybelinda, PhD, art historian.