Exhibition

Gardens of Dreams

M17 Contemporary Art Center102-104, Antonovycha St., Kyiv, 03150, Ukraine

About the project

On 25 July 2024, the Gardens of Dreams exhibition project was open at the M17 Contemporary Art Center, Kyiv, Ukraine, featuring international and Ukrainian artists.
The exhibition includes artworks by Cao Fei, Refik Anadol, Aljoscha, Anatoly Gankevich, Megumi Ohata, Wolfgang Stiller, and Anna Myronova
The project focuses on the study of imaginary worlds, views on the coexistence of humans with artificial intelligence, expanding the horizons of synthetic biology, virtuality and reality, as well as a metaphor for the temple of the future, which is being built today and is not solely constructed by humans.

About the artists

Cao Fei

Cao Fei is an ultra-contemporary artist ranked among the Top 5 in China, and her popularity is constantly growing. Cao Fei’s works have been exhibited in many global cultural institutions, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA PS1 in New York.

Refik Anadol

Refik Anadol is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence, winner of numerous awards and prizes. Anadol’s site-specific audio/visual performances have been exhibited at MoMA (New York), the Centre Pompidou, Pinakothek der Moderne, Art Basel. Anadol works with artificial intelligence to create “machine hallucinations”, and thus addresses the question of whether machines can dream. 

Aljoscha

Aljoscha’s works are represented in a number of museum collections across the world, such as Tate Modern in London and Museum Ludwig in Cologne, among others. Recently, his artworks were showcased at TEFAF art fairs in New York and Maastricht. Installations of Aljoscha offer transcendental immersion in the artist’s translucent and delicately coloured synthetic organic forms, inviting the audience to reflect on the phylogenetic origins of human eudaimonia and upcoming bioethics. 

Anatoly Gankevich

Anatoly Gankevich is famous for creating paintings in a unique technique – imitation of mosaics, and video art. Last year, Gankevich’s solo exhibition Night in Paradise was on view at the Frédérick Mouraux Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. The artist bases his work on observation, creating an atmosphere, combining different plans and attention to detail.

Megumi Ohata

Megumi Ohata was a runner-up for the Batsford Prize 2019 and delivered an artist talk “Reimagining Human Body” at the Tate Modern (London) in 2023. Ohata developed a technique for creating one-of-a-kind artificial skin textiles, imprinted with the artist’s own skin textures, and they perceive their art as an extension of the body, blurring boundaries beyond skin, seeking the non-human form within.

Wolfgang Stiller

Wolfgang Stiller has been an artist for almost 40 years, during which time he witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the prime of popular culture. His works can be found in prestigious museum collections around the world, from China to Germany. Wolfgang Stiller’s work balances a sometimes ambiguous form of social commentary with playfulness, dark humor, and technical virtuosity. The human head as the locus of psyche and personality is a central motif for Stiller, and recurs in wildly different and imaginative contexts across his oeuvre.

Anna Myronova

Anna Myronova has recently been appointed a corresponding member of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. She is a lecturer at the Design Department of the Institute of Arts at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University. As early as 2016, Anna Myronova was included in the Forbes ranking of the most successful representatives of contemporary Ukrainian art. Myronova produces paintings, graphics, art objects and photographs.

Exposition

Concept

People have long turned to gardens, both real and imaginary, in search of refuge from the frenzy of reality. From the sacred space of the Garden of Eden, a place of unconditional love, joy, and the fulfilment of high dreams, to the gardens of philosophers, which have become a model and a place for meticulous self-improvement and self-development necessary for peace and enlightenment: these associations have been preserved in the public domain for centuries.
How will a human being imagine paradise in the future? What seeds of today will form the garden of tomorrow? What will be hidden from view in the dark shadows of the lush beauty of the garden of dreams?

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    Rapid technological development and the evolution of artificial intelligence call into question whether humans will retain their superiority. Moreover, the uncertainty shrouds the trajectory of human development and the place of the human being today, as the starting point from where we begin our journey into the future. The imperfection of the human physical embodiment is that regardless of being a creator like God, humans remain dual and helpless to find immortality and are subject to the physical perishability of the body, yet they seek immortality in creation and reincarnation in artificial intelligence.
    However, unlike artificial intelligence, humans are endowed by higher powers with the ability to dream, believe and rely on their inner will and become co-creators. Through their dreams, people invent ways to form alternative worlds and act as both creators and destructors in the constant pursuit of the highest good and immortality. Still, being aware of the duality of their own nature and the utopia of paradise, people, guided by faith, continue to multiply the dimensions of existence and stay in constant search. In dreams and imagination, a new life and a new reality is envisaged and born. 
    The project explores the imaginary worlds of artists: from human coexistence with artificial intelligence, expanding the horizons of synthetic biology through bioism, the birth of their own models in virtual and real worlds to the Garden of Eden, as a metaphor for the temple of the future, which is being built today and is not solely constructed by humans. 

    • Head of the project

    • Natalia Shpytkovska

    • Head of the project

    • Head of the project

    • Natalia Shpytkovska

    • Natalia Shpytkovska

    • Texts by

    • Yuliya Bukus, Content Manager, Copywriter

    • Head of the project

    • Texts by

    • Natalia Shpytkovska

    • Yuliya Bukus, Content Manager, Copywriter

    • Exhibition Dates

    • From 25 July, 2024

    • Head of the project

    • Exhibition Dates

    • Natalia Shpytkovska

    • From 25 July, 2024

    • Work Hours

    • Tuesday - Sunday, 11:00-20:00

    • Head of the project

    • Work Hours

    • Natalia Shpytkovska

    • Tuesday - Sunday, 11:00-20:00

Head of the project

Natalia Shpytkovska, Director of the M17 CAC

Texts by

Yuliya Bukus, Content Manager, Copywriter

Exhibition Dates

From 25 July, 2024

Work Hours

Tuesday - Sunday, 11:00-20:00

Foretypes

Organiser and the main partner

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M17 Contemporary Art Center

M17 Contemporary Art Center is a cultural institution that functions as an educational and research platform, an exhibition venue for Ukrainian and foreign contemporary art. The activities of the Center are aimed at creating a dialogue space for professional circles and all the representatives of the culture sector as a whole, at study and research of contemporary and related historical cultural processes.

Heading photo

Art Support Fund

Art Support Fund is an independent, non-profit, charitable and public-benefit foundation initiated by a group of international patrons, contributing to arts and culture and following the aim to help and support the preservation of the cultural heritage of Ukraine. The Fund was established to ensure the sustainable functioning of the Ukrainian cultural sector, including professionals, assets and infrastructure.