When discussing the Municipal Gallery’s significant projects, the gallery’s off-site projects often come to mind. We want to talk about the exhibitions of 2004! The “Capital Express” project was simultaneously exhibited at two Kyiv venues: the “Soviart” Museum of Contemporary Art and the “K-11” club-gallery.

The reason for creating the project was the emergence of a new communication link between the capital and Kharkiv – the “express” train. It was during the 5-hour journey on the “express,” or as it is now called – “Intercity,” that Tetyana Tumasyan, the project curator, came up with the idea of the “Capital Express.”

It became a multi-level creative action, a real exhibition marathon! The curators found the slogan for the action in a video advertisement for the high-speed train “Kharkiv-Kyiv”: “Capital Express – Ukraine-Europe – non-stop movement.”

The program consisted of three main blocks: sculptural projects by Oleksandr Ridnyi, Anna Ivanova, and Volodymyr Kochmar; photo and media projects by Sergiy Bratkov and Sergiy Solonsiy; and a cross-section of the city’s young art called “Youth Quarter,” where various projects and fragments of projects by participants of the NontStopMedia festival were exhibited. Due to the large number of works by young artists, the festival was held in two shifts! In particular, the program included a master class by Pavel Makov and a meeting with Sergiy Zhadan.

Especially for Kyiv, Sergiy Solonsiy prepared a new photo project “The Fifth Element,” for the opening of which the artist asked the organizers to add a greasy stool, and on it – a faceted glass and a bottle of cheap vodka, blood from a cheap nose! The author himself did not appear at the opening, and those who opened the project had to take a sip of the same vodka! Sergiy Bratkov also decided to resort to unexpected solutions and asked the organizers to show the project in a new space for exhibitions – Kyiv railway station! It turned out to be not so easy to organize a presentation there, so the demonstration had to be postponed for some time.

The presentation of various projects was also very successful and unconventional: “Capital Express” had an identity stylized as a railway: invitations – tickets for a train, a newspaper instead of booklets.

“Cheap and good (cunning, wise, and at a high cost), and besides, free advertising for our railway!” – this is how visitors commented on the project.

https://mgallery.kharkov.ua/2004-proiekt-stolychnyi-ekspres/