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For the first time, ArtEast Gallery presents paintings by Ukrainian artists from private collections, spanning almost fifty years from the 1970s to 2021.

The purpose of this exhibition is to represent Ukrainian women in society over the past fifty years. Artists capture female protagonists in various emotional states, ranging from false contentment or melancholia to anguish. All these representations immerse the viewer in a mysterious, fragile, and incredibly multifaceted female universe. The works gathered here also depict the traditional female environment in Ukraine and how it has changed over the past fifty years. The contrast between the male and the female perspectives of the artists also highlights discrepancies in the representation of women in society.

The exhibition features works by prolific artists including Yuriy Yegorov, a prominent member of the Odesa art movement, Oleksii Apolonov called the "Ukrainian Picasso", Yevhen Rakhmanin and Mykolaiv Lukin, as well as Olena Pryduvalova, Iryna Yurova and Katia Soloveva.

On the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Open Society Foundations and  the ArtEast Gallery  have the honor to invite you to the exhibition of contemporary Ukrainian art.

The Time Has Come

February 24 - March 24, 2023

Mo-Fr: 9. a.m. - 5 p.m.

Jägerstraße 54-55, 10117 Berlin

Free admission and no registration.

On February 23, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and in association with the panel discussion One Year into the Full-Scale Invasion: Europe’s Role in Securing Ukraine’s Victory, the Open Society Foundations and the ArtEast Gallery present the opening of the exhibition of contemporary Ukrainian art.

The title "The Time Has Come" references Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. The exhibition demonstrates the persistence of creative energy despite the harshness of war. Contemporary Ukrainian art is a manifestation of the unalterable ingenuity of its artists and their deep desire for freedom.

The selected works convey an experience of the most absolute violence, universal and also deeply personal. Artist Kinder Album uses vivid watercolors to develop rich and powerful imagery of war. Vlada Ralko and Vladimir Budnikov use pen and paint to put the monsters of war on paper and write their war diaries as the days go by. Olesya Dzhurayeva's engravings show the anguish of the first weeks of the invasion, printed with black earth from the Ukrainian soil. In Julia Beliaeva's work, the fineness of the porcelain reinforces by contrast the cruel and blind violence of the bullets that are represented.

French painter Pierre Soulages wrote "the more limited the means, the stronger the expression". Put under multiple constraints over the decades and aware of the fragility of peace, Ukrainian art has long developed a balance between lightness and depth, which the new generation carries on. This can be seen in the delicate painting Vika and Andrei by Sergey Kononov, in Kseniia Hlynytska's luminous and serene work, but also in the coexistence of light subjects of daily life and more disturbing elements in the prints of the duo Etchingroom1, as well as in the dark poetry of the drawings of Rostislaw Tsarenko. As for Oleksii Koval, he nourishes his art with folkloric and traditional Ukrainian motifs, as a contemporary tribute to a long artistic tradition.

"Not a Dream" is an exhibition devoted to the most recent works of two outstanding visual artists, Vlada Ralko and Volodymyr Budnikov, and their experience of the first months of total war in their country. The scenography specially imagined by Aurélie Maestre offers a raw encounter with the works and a direct confrontation with the reality they depict. This exhibition is a non-commercial event, supported by the Peace for Art Foundation and hosted by the ArtEast Gallery.

The series "Diary of Lviv" by Vlada Ralko and "Time of War" by Volodymyr Budnikov were created in 2022, first in Lviv where the artists took refuge at the beginning of the conflict and then in exile in Berlin. Created in a moment of crisis, the graphic works convey a sense of brutality and distress. The repetitive use of quick strokes sets the tone for the series. They are as much part of the drawing as they are a flaw, a crack, an erasure. From the accumulation of these sharp and tight lines, forms appear like visions.

These visions take the shape of mutating beings, acts of cannibalization, struggling bodies. They depict a humanity grappling with its own fears of past and present. Yet these nightmares, carried by abstraction in Budnikov’s works and by phantasmagoria in Ralko’s, appear to be real. Physical elements such as skeletons, genitals, or muscles give the images a deep and intimate bodily presence, which chills the viewer’s blood. Finally, the numerous references to history and ideologies of the 20th century further anchor the drawings in a painful and deadly reality.

More information here. 

We warmly invite you to our Christmas concert on Friday, December 16th at 7 p.m. to close this year which was full of emotions for all of us.

Please send us your reservation at: contact@arteastgallery-bk.com or +49 1520 5826249

Despite the terrible ongoing war in Ukraine and the conflict situations in so many other countries, we would like to end with a positive and hopeful note with a concert of delightful melodies from all around Europe and a glass of French wine. In these times of tension, we believe that this concert is necessary to feel how strong we are together.

Natalia Skrycka (mezzo soprano) and Lorenzo Di Toro (pianist) are permanent ensemble members of the State Opera. The program will include lieder and songs by Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill, as well as classics by Edith Piaf, Domenico Modugno and Neapolitan and Polish melodies.

ArtEast Gallery presents the solo exhibition "It was crowded yesterday" by Ukrainian artists etchinroom1!  The vernissage of the exhibition will take place on May 10 at 7 p.m. You are warmly welcome! The entry is free.

Regular opening hours:

Monday - Friday: 2 - 6 p.m. 

Saturday : call us, we can arrange a meeting!

+49 1520 5826249 / contact@arteastgallery-bk.com

Etchingroom1 is a duo consisting of Kristina Yarosh and Anna Khodkova, two Ukrainian artists who founded their printing studio in 2016. Using many techniques such as mosaic, silkscreen or etching, they offer a very meticulous work full of details and humor.

The artworks are inhabited by a permanent dialogue between past, present and future. Etchingroom1 plays on paradoxes and anachronisms by representing ultra-modern or futuristic engines (submarines, flying saucers) through etching, a technique dating back to the Middle Ages and otherwise neglected by recent artistic trends. This relationship to the past is highlighted through the expression of the Ukrainian collective culture and imagination, both strongly impregnated by the imminence of war and by a relentless quest for identity.
But Anna and Kristina go far beyond referring to their country's history, they reappropriate it by giving it another dimension that is not only aesthetic, but also more universal, addressed to all spectators of their art.

Through their exhibition "It was crowded yesterday", Anna and Kristina draw the portrait of Ukrainian and more generally European society in all its diversity.
It was crowded yesterday, when millions of Ukrainians gathered onto train platforms to flee the war. It was crowded yesterday, when hundreds of people met at an underground concert in the center of Kyiv despite the war. Let's continue to gather, when it comes to resisting, to standing for Ukraine and celebrating art.

ArtEast Gallery presents the solo exhibition "Once upon a time three dead parrots" by Ukrainian artist Kinder Album!  The vernissage of the exhibition will take place on March 4 at 7 p.m. You are warmly welcome! contact@arteastgallery-bk.com.

Regular opening hours:

Monday,Tuesday & Thursday: 4 - 7 p.m. 

Friday : 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. 

Saturday : call us, we can arrange a meeting!

You can also ring the door bell at daytime, most of the time someone will be there to open. 

+49 1520 5826249 / contact@arteastgallery-bk.com. 

The hygiene concept of the gallery is in line with the valid guidelines of infection control.

"Once upon a time, three dead parrots" is the artist's first solo exhibition in Germany. Originally from Lviv, Kinder Album explores our collective anxieties through deliberately trashy scenes or provocative stagings. Each painting or drawing is based on a news item or a shared reference from pop culture, ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Queen Elizabeth. Strongly inspired by thrillers, with which the artist likes to scare herself, Kinder Album slips her own fragility and fears into her artworks. These fears, hers, are also ours, and Kinder Album invites the audience to face them. Slowly, the childish varnish cracks, revealing morbid scenes and a society riddled with cynicism. 

The cruelty of society is particularly highlighted by the symbol of the parrot, an exotic bird that has come to die in the snow and the coldness of Ukrainian and European societies that are hostile to their presence. Kinder Album also mocks, with a scathing humor, the hypocrisy of certain standards that, not daring to confront the representation of naked women - and even going so far as to censor them on instagram - still fantasizes the woman-object. By assigning us to the disturbing posture of the voyeur, the artist opens an interstitial space  so that the spectator appropriates the interpretation.

Kinder Album was born in 1982 in Lviv, Ukraine. She studied architecture at the University of Lviv and at the Technischen Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe in Germany. In 2012 she started working under her artist name "Kinder Album", and in 2013 she presented her first exhibition at the Dzyga Gallery in Lviv. She is still particularly active in the art scene of her hometown but also exhibits across Europe, from the UK to Poland, Montenegro & Lithuania. In 2021, she exhibited outside the European continent for the first time as part of the exhibition "Transcending Boundaries", which was shown at Galeria Tira al Blanco in Guadalajara (Mexico).

ArtEast Gallery presents the solo exhibition "Brother & Sister" by  Viktoria Sorochinski!  

Regular opening hours:

Monday,Tuesday & Thursday: 4 - 7 p.m. 

Friday : 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. 

Saturday : call us, we can arrange a meeting!

You can also ring the door bell at daytime, most of the time someone will be there to open. Or call us to plan your visit: +49 1520 5826249 / contact@arteastgallery-bk.com. The hygiene concept of the gallery is in line with the valid guidelines of infection control. 

"Brother & Sister” is one of the large narrative projects by Viktoria Sorochinski, shot with an analog camera and portraying the interpersonal brother-sister relationships and their journey into adulthood. Deeply inspired by myths, folk tales, beliefs, and psychoanalytical research, Viktoria Sorochinski is capturing in her carefully orchestrated scenes the world of children’s fantasies, fears, and lessons that we all go through while growing up.  Viktoria Sorochinski shot the “Brother & Sister” project in Norway during an art residency on the island of Halsnoy, in a house that used to belong to a medieval monastery, and where the story unfolds. “House” is a symbol that represents the foundation of our inner self in the Jungian psychoanalysis, therefore it is the starting point of the magical journey of little Martha and Mathias, a sister and a brother whom Viktoria Sorochinski encountered on the island. From this house, shrouded in mystery, legends and popular beliefs, the two children explore the surroundings, the woods, the unknown… They get to know each other and themselves, and team up against the evil forces.

Viktoria Sorochinski is an internationally recognized artist-photographer. Since completing her Masters of Fine Arts degree at New York University (NYU) in 2008, she has had over 75 exhibitions in 23 different countries throughout Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Sorochinski’s work is featured and reviewed in over 85 international publications including her monograph “Anna & Eve” published by Peperoni Books in Germany. She is also a laureate of over 40 international awards, fellowships and grants among which are Arnold Newman Prize, Leica Oskar Barnack Award, LensCulture Exposure Award, Lucie Award, Magenta Flash Forward, PDN Photo Annual and Voies Off Arles Award. Born in Ukraine and having lived in several different countries, Viktoria currently lives and works in Berlin.