…Valer Bondar loved autumn and the Japanese and did not want to become a “happy classic” in art. He drew in the style of Bashō’s poetry and quoted Akutagawa: “The happiness of the classics lies in the fact that, one way or another, they are dead” (“The Death of a Pygmy”). This time we are marking the “Year of Bondar in Kharkiv” at a memorable moment for our city. Kharkiv ultras, finally united with all living and healthy Kharkiv residents, toppled from the pedestal of Europe’s largest square a dead classic of an ideology that had deadened the minds of millions of people for decades.
Thus, today more than ever, Koka’s (Andrii Kokotiukha’s) inscription in one of the books presented to the artist sounds particularly relevant: “Bondar is more alive today than all the living.”