Following numerous set-backs and a potential cancellation, the second Kiev Biennial will open this September, the Art Newspaper reports.  The rescheduled event will be hosted at the Visual Culture Research Center, a target in the past for right-wing protests and activists.  Speaking of the Euromaidan revolution, Curator Georg Schöllhammer noted that the political upheaval in the country “spoke loudly about what the people of the Ukraine want to get rid of.  I think we have to follow that.” (more…)

The continued instability of Ukraine has led to cancellation of the second Kiev Biennale, the New York Times reports.  The 2014 edition had been postponed due to conflict, and the ongoing military confrontation in the eastern portion of the country has ultimately led to the event’s cancellation.  “Due to the fact that the armed conflict in the East of Ukraine does not stop,” a release from the organization says, the event has become “absolutely impossible.”  (more…)

A Ukrainian artist is accusing Nataliia Zabolotna, the exhibition curator and director at Kiev’s Mystetskyi Arsenal, of censoring a work using daubs of black paint.  The mural, Judgement Day, was censored claiming it was not in the spirit of the exhibition’s focus on the “Great and Grand,” and has already led to the resignation of deputy director Alexander Solovyov.  “I think that censorship is unacceptable, even more so by [an] institution which aims to engage in and support art.”  He said. (more…)

Jake and Dinos Chapman, The Sum of all Evil, (2012-2013), Courtesy of the artists and White Cube via Pinchuk Art Centre

Jake and Dino Chapman are currently presenting Chicken, their first solo show in the Ukraine, at the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev. The exhibition is centered around a new installation, titled The Sum of all Evil (2013), that confronts violence, death and the Holocaust through a series of comically perverse tableaus. Additional works from the Chapman brother’s oevre are also on display, providing an artistic context to the brothers subversive black humor and embrace of taboo subject matter.

Jake and Dinos Chapman, The Sum of all Evil, (2012-2013), Courtesy of the artists and White Cube via Pinchuk Art Centre

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‬Forbes writes on Ukraine’s shift from its Soviet past towards a landscape more conducive to contemporary art thanks to such endeavors as the First Kiev International Biennale and the Pinchuk Art Center, now featuring a solo exhibition by Anish Kapoor.

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