NIKITA KADAN. The Bones mixed together

An exhibition organized as a part of the festival Rise of Eastern Culture / Another DimensionTopics and Places Ready for Silence: Here and Now

The Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan is a pensive human being. Not only are his works ample proof of individual creative interests – they are also a crucial trace of the intellectual trail blazed by first-generation young Ukrainians growing up in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Kadan’s membership of such groups as Revolutionary Experimental Space[1] and HudRada[2] helped him develop social sensitivity as well as a certain unique type of communication. Members of both formations wished to learn something “social/group-oriented” in counterpoint to the loss of community bonds, a phenomenon typical for the post-Soviet area. Universities, schools, local councils, employee unions, public authorities – none of these came up with any usable concept of a new communication formula. Yet various communication formulae appeared spontaneously during social protests, which have been breaking out regularly in independent Ukraine. The reluctance to accept gibberish was common, as was prejudice – yet the generation of Kadan’s peers wanted to communicate. They were concerned with public matters – political protests, illegal real estate and land trading, employee rights, economic migration, the judiciary, moral panic, and many others. The artist’s place in the society was also one such issue. Neither the romantic nor the socialist image thereof matched the needs of the generation. R.E.P. and HudRada served as self-education fellowships, debate clubs, and “experimental fields of interdisciplinary co-operation”. Art and projects created in mutual inspiration carried diverse and subversive poetics.

While Kadan’s individual artistic practice is different in intensity, his works also remain close to such issues of tremendous importance to public debate (as opposed to discussions in the mass media) in the Ukraine. Kadan works with immense precision. Focusing on visual codes, he disassembles pathos and sublimity, adored by all totalitarian authorities and groups confident that their truths are the only right ones. He creates a critical visual language, wherein he proposes problem areas rather than uttering communications or descriptions. Any audience deciding to truly connect with Kadan’s art usually faces quite a challenge. Occasionally, I was under the impression that any summary of his projects ought to contain the phrase “and thus I proved the hypothesis”. Yet the artist moves well beyond a simple illustration of reflections on selected components of a selected slice of the world. He openly takes on the fact that his own rationality (logical thinking skills, dexterity in contextual analysis, the belief that rational rules do exist) may tend to surrender to the present, e.g. under circumstances of viewing specific practices of the regime. In time, the past will also demand that all these assumptions be abandoned.