We begin the week of 2012 with a truly significant event not only for the gallery but for the entire city and country: the establishment of the Yermilov Centre for Contemporary Art.

Kharkiv was in need of new, large spaces to exhibit contemporary art. Our gallery was one of the initiators of creating the Yermilov Centre, and Tetyana Tumasyan, the director of the Municipal Gallery, became the curator for the centre’s first year of exhibitions, significantly shaping its ideology. Thus, in the spring of 2012, the space of a former nightclub in the basement of the university was transformed into the Yermilov Centre, the first and still the only contemporary art center in Kharkiv.

The Yermilov Centre opened with the project “Construction. From Constructivism to Contemporary. Kharkiv 20th-21st centuries,” which united the works of avant-garde artists Vasyl Yermylov (1894–1968), Borys Kosarev (1897–1994), and contemporary artists: Vitaliy Kulykov, Pavel Makov, Artem Volokitin, Roman Minin, Hamlet Zin’kovs’kyi, and Alina Kleitman. The exhibition featured paintings, graphics, photography, murals, and video art from the 2000s, as well as rare artifacts from the 1920s from museum and private collections.

The next nationally significant event was the exhibition of Oleksandr Hnylytskyi (1961-2009) titled “Darwin Street, House 44,” which marked the first solo exhibition of the renowned artist in his hometown. The space of the Yermilov Centre was divided into distinct “living zones” where Hnylytskyi’s works and 70s-style furniture props were displayed. Visitors could see a cozy living room with a carpet, books, and a convex-screen TV. Or, for example, a similar zone in a contemporary style: a plasma screen with video documentation of the artist’s recent creative life, large projections.

The first year of the Yermilov Centre’s artistic life also presented Kharkiv’s audience with an exhibition of the most renowned contemporary artists in the country, including Sergiy Bratkov, Oleksandr Roytburd, Arsen Savadov, Vasyl Tsagolov, Pavlo Makov, and Oleg Tistol (curated by Tetyana Tumasyan and Igor Abramovich); as well as Viktor Sydorenko’s project “Reflection in the Unknown. Viewers could observe Sydorenko’s paintings, which were so difficult to distinguish from surreal photographs that had been digitally manipulated that one might question whether they were indeed hand-painted.

https://mgallery.kharkov.ua/1996-vidkrittja-mg-proiekt-hronika-arta-harkiv-80-90-ti-roki/