When recalling 2001, we first want to talk about the youth programs of the Municipal Gallery, which were successfully launched in 1998 and became the precursor to the future large-scale contemporary art festival – NonStopMedia.

The project “New Art of an Independent Country” was dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence and the Day of Kharkiv’s Liberation. The exhibition featured 17 young artists and over 70 works.

The central theme that the artists worked with was an attempt to understand what freedom of self-expression means in an independent country. What or who is the object of contemplation? What is the source of inspiration now? What is the means of representation and who is the viewer? The exhibition demonstrated new trends in art and the worldview of a free person, an independent artist in an independent country.

Another important project was the exhibition “Maybe,” which was a kind of “snapshot” of the then-contemporary art culture of Eastern Ukraine. The project – a look at contemporary visual art – presented works by artists of the “Naprotiv” association, which began its activities in the second half of the 90s. Independent basements, nightclubs in the center of Kharkiv were a challenge to the established views of the Kharkiv world, where official culture and categoricalness prevailed.

Artists showed that it is impossible to create something within the framework of critical categories that accompanied the art of the last century. The main criterion for selecting projects was the search for diversity.

The exhibitions of the two exhibitions contained the latest works of authors who belonged to a new generation of artists and clearly demonstrated a variety of approaches and means of implementation. In most works, the influence of a whole range of artistic trends of the 20th century was clearly heard. However, this group of works not only did not contribute to the creation of a new school or current “ism”, but in general did not claim final completeness.

https://mgallery.kharkov.ua/2001-molodizhni-prohrammy-munitsypalnoi-halerei/