🗓 Vlodko Kaufman – Erasure
21.06 – 06.07.2025
🎉 Opening: 21.06.2025, 7:00 PM
📍 Savchenko Gallery, al. Grunwaldzka 504, 80-309 Gdańsk
This time, our gallery is honored to present a true legend of contemporary Ukrainian art.
Vlodko Kaufman is best known as an outstanding artist, performer, installation creator, stage designer, and curator. For many years, he has also served as the artistic director of the Dzyga Art Association, which for over 30 years has helped shape the artistic spirit and cultural identity of both Lviv and Ukraine.
Countless exhibitions and major artistic projects have taken place thanks to Kaufman’s organizational and curatorial efforts.
We are thrilled to showcase his work at our gallery and introduce both his artistic output and the broader Dzyga artistic community to audiences in Gdańsk.
Even more special is the fact that the artist himself will be present at the opening of the exhibition.
We warmly invite you to the opening on June 21st at 7:00 PM at Savchenko Gallery!
FREE ENTRY
About the exhibition:
The presented works are the result of a long internal dialogue between the artist and himself — a dialogue that raises questions without offering clear answers.
Each piece was once a text — available only to a limited group of readers.
An incomprehensible relief, saturated with ideological meaning, is sanded down to holes — like memory, like the past.
Perforation becomes a metaphor: by perforating the text, we also perforate ourselves.
Can we ever truly rid ourselves of experiences received against our will?
“…It started when Ivan Luchuk (a Ukrainian writer) gave me a book in Braille — I think it was the History of the CPSU. Of course, I tampered with it…
But what next, what to do with this paper when its very texture speaks so much…? I began to sand down the raised dots, and soon the blind person for whom the page was intended could no longer feel anything — and I could no longer see anything…”
“This is the performative part of the act that can already be shown…”
An image that provokes reflection; a form that reduces the distance to understanding — an antithesis to the feverish “search for identity.”
In the midst of the noise of information, only content without narrative can reach consciousness.
To create such content, one must walk a long path — until intuitive form aligns with the archetypes of collective unconsciousness.
— B. Mysiuga, Zbrucz, 17.08.2017
About the artist: Vlodko Kaufman
Born in 1957 in Karaganda (Kazakhstan)
1974–1978 – Studied at the Ivan Trush Lviv College of Applied Arts
1978–1980 – Studied Architecture at Lviv Polytechnic
1989–1993 – Member of the art group “Shlyakh”
Since 1993 – Co-founder and artistic director of the Dzyga Art Association
2007 – Co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Art
Lives and works in Lviv
Author of numerous exhibitions and artistic projects in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Austria, and other countries
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2017 – Conversation, Dzyga Gallery, Lviv
2012 – Fish Therapy, Dzyga Gallery, Lviv
2012 – Silence of Light, Dzyga Gallery, Lviv
2010 – Attempt of Premonition, installation, Fort.Missia Festival, Popovychi
2009 – Bird Therapy, graphic installation, Dzyga Gallery
2007 – Carpathian Division, painting and installation, Dzyga Gallery
2005–2006 – Utilization of Nostalgia, painting installation, Lviv
2004 – Nest Quotes, K-11 Gallery, Kyiv
2002 – Technology of Sensitivity, Lviv–Kyiv
2001 – And You, Bruno…, installation, Dzyga Gallery
2000 – Second Hand, Dzyga Gallery
1999 – Time–Constant, Dzyga Gallery
1993 – Letters to Earthlings, Lviv Art Gallery
“In reality, this is my next performative project, with the material being one of the volumes from the 12-volume series History of the CPSU, published in Braille. These sheets, perforated in Braille, are self-contained and interesting as objects, though I’m not interested in what is written there—especially since I see them only symbolically and aesthetically. I caught myself realizing that I only guess what is written in Braille—I know it’s a Soviet text, but I can’t read it. I try to erase the relief with sandpaper, and as a result, the more I rub away, the less I know—new holes appear, a new language emerges. I’m wiping out that Soviet ideology from my consciousness, destroying it for myself.”
“It’s a long-term performance. Each layer of sanding makes the paper thinner, and the holes deeper. Each subsequent rubbing brings out some kind of images, figures, heads. For some, they are saints; for others, soldiers; for still others, portraits of peasants. At a certain point, it’s hard to distinguish a hat from a halo. It’s an artificial sacralization, imagined by the viewers. This is a transitional version—I will continue this project, which might lead to the complete destruction of the sheets. And maybe that will bring me closer to the moment of finally squeezing the Soviet out of myself,” says Kaufman.
Works on exhbtion:
