Looking into the Gaps is an exhibition cycle that approaches the history and present of Ukrainian art as an ornament of ruptures, losses, and absences, in which what exists serves merely as a frame for what is missing.
The cycle consists of separate chapters, previously presented at Voloshyn Gallery in Kyiv (2024); the Artsvit Gallery and DCCC spaces in Dnipro (2025); ART FRONT Gallery in Tokyo, Japan (2026); as well as landscape exhibitions in Sokołowsko (Poland), Berlin (Germany), and on the island of Teshima in Japan. The aim of the cycle is to reflect on the process of moving along a conscious path composed largely of obstacles, and on the construction of a coherent narrative that breaks off again and again.
On February 21, three works from our collection were presented at the exhibition of Nikita Kadan's curatorial project “Looking into the Gaps IV” in Lviv:
♦ Davyd Chychkan. Lesia and the Tapes of Her Struggle. 2021. Paper, watercolor;
♦ Pavlo Bedzir. From the series Life of Trees, 1990s. Hardboard, grattage, artist’s technique;
♦ Myroslav Yahoda, River of the Dead, 1990s Ink, paper.
The central motif of the Lviv part of the project, presented at Jam Factory Art Center, is the theme of loneliness and the relationship between the “I” and the “we” as shaped by the experience of war.
“The history of Ukrainian art is a torn history and, at the same time, a history of gaps. Interrupted narratives, destroyed works, repressed authors, loud silence, rewriting the past according to the new dominant ideology, tragedies of conformism and the virtuosity of self-justification, breaking oneself over the knee, changing sides in the middle of an argument, changing names halfway through, dissociative identity. Or martyrdom through self-immolation, followed by turning ashes into bronze. And bronze is known to steal the meaning from ashes every time. Is it possible to wander through a landscape of catastrophe? Are there flâneurs on blood-soaked lands? This exhibition answers in the affirmative,” says Nikita Kadan.
The curator shares that work on the fourth exhibition began with reflections on the fate of the categories of “we” and “I” in wartime. Self-restraint and external restrictions, self-censorship, mutual surveillance — these are the themes from which cracks spread and around which the social fabric tears. During the preparation of the exhibition, the theme of loneliness gradually crystallized in a world where a new normality, entirely permeated by war, has taken shape. These reflections led to a whole range of lonelinesses: from loneliness within a constantly rewritten history to loneliness within a social contract that is continuously betrayed. As well as loneliness between the history of art and the hysteria of artistic life. And, returning to the beginning — about “us,” about that indissoluble residue of unity without which everything will be lost.
WHEN: February 21 –May 17, 2026
WHERE: Jam factory Art Center, Lviv, 124 B. Khmelnytskyi St.
Photo: Iryna Polikarchuk
