Weronika Artyszuk
Undergraduate student of Cultural Studies at the University of Gdańsk.
Intern at the Savchenko Gallery.
Erasing, perforating, rubbing, smudging, stamping – and so on, endlessly. Brown, shapeless stains slowly begin to take form: soldiers, saints from icons, blurred silhouettes. This is the process of creation for Ukrainian artist Vlodko Kaufman, whose works, unassuming at first glance, conceal an intriguing depth. The exhibition entitled “Erasure” could be visited from June to July at the Savchenko Gallery in Gdańsk.
Vlodko Kaufman is an outstanding Ukrainian artist, curator, performer, and co-founder of the Contemporary Art Association “Dzyga,” born in Karaganda (Kazakhstan). Through his experimental approach to art, he has developed his own style, focused more on the very act of creation than on the final outcome. His work lies at the intersection of many artistic fields such as graphics, performance, happening, and video art. What matters most is not the final image we see on the wall, but what lies behind the stage of creating it (vydyvo). Everything begins with an idea, which dictates the form. The material is no less important, often becoming a crucial part of the entire work, sometimes even its very core.
It all began when Kaufman received a gift from writer Ivan Luchuk – the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, written in Braille. This object, saturated with ideology, pushed the artist, raised in the USSR regime, toward an act of artistic destruction. Laboriously rubbing the pages with paper eventually wore away the raised dots entirely, making it impossible for a blind person to read the text. The message of the work was no longer legible to anyone, and the scraped, punctured, later also painted-over pages no longer resembled book leaves. The text was stripped of its meaning, and at the same time people lost the ability to access it. At first, it may seem like a simple creative act by an artist eager to rid himself of a communist past. Yet the destruction of a literary work, especially one political and historical, can provoke controversy. On one hand, the artist erases the views contained in the book, ensuring that no one will ever read them again. On the other, he gains control over the audience, manipulating the information delivered to them—or rather, depriving them of it entirely. Good intentions, aimed at “erasing” a fragment of history, can easily turn into authoritarianism or even a form of censorship. The thin line between obliterating propaganda slogans and controlling facts makes Kaufman’s works intriguing, enigmatic, and even more ambiguous. The blurred silhouettes will mean something different to each viewer, adding further multidimensionality to his art. Everyone will take something from it, but will they really?
The exhibition is not only about balancing between an artistic manifesto and the control of information, but also reflections on the formation of human personality. No one is born as a blank slate – each of us feels the influence of countless factors on our choices and beliefs. Can they be erased and restarted from zero? Is life without any context possible? We are all dependent on something or someone, regardless of our will. We may wish to interpret a work in our own way, but it will never be free from its author, nor from the circumstances in which it was created. Even though we believe that our feelings about art are authentic and profound, in reality, even in this field we may be controlled by the artist, who embeds the work in a context, perhaps hiding something from us—something that could completely change our perception of it. No matter how much we might want to remove all external influences, it is impossible. At first glance, it might seem otherwise: in Kaufman’s works we can no longer read communist slogans, so theoretically they could be considered a “blank page.” Yet without knowing the material on which they were made, they lose all meaning. They exist thanks to a context (in this case, political) – just like us. From this perspective, they are not independent, autonomous entities, but rather shaped by the political framework. Even though Kaufman’s works have been nearly stripped of texture, they are still not that “blank page.” We had no choice – the artist made it for us, depriving the literary work he used of its original meaning. For us (and for the work), it is the artist who becomes the “context,” deciding what we can and cannot see, even if we think we are the ones making that decision. Perhaps freedom of interpretation is just an illusion.
“Erasure” is not only about mysterious figures on scraped, punctured paper that once carried a political manifesto, but also a reflection on the power of the artist and the consequences of his actions. It raises questions about the phenomenon of interpretive freedom—if such freedom exists at all—and about the self-sufficiency of a work of art. It reminds us of human interdependence, of our subjection to the things and events around us. In today’s world, are we capable of functioning without contexts—politics, society, economics—or are they so deeply rooted that even art without them is meaningless? Perhaps we cannot exist without them.
Gdańsk, August 2025