Symbolically opening on the day of the artist’s passing, the exhibition brings together painting, poster art, and graphic works from different periods. The selection is shaped not by chronology, but by the internal logic of artistic thought. There is no attempt to reduce Kulikov’s work to a single style or “theme.” Instead, the exhibition reveals his sustained engagement with form, irony, corporeality, and the anxieties of his time — elements that, in the context of today’s full-scale war, acquire new and urgent meanings.
Vitalii Kulikov was one of the key figures of Kharkiv’s artistic milieu from the second half of the 20th to the early 21st century. His practice emerged within post-Soviet realities, driven by an inner resistance to official aesthetics and a deep belief in the autonomy of the image. Kulikov worked with signs, metaphors, and plastic tension, often leaving space for doubt and interpretation rather than offering fixed conclusions.
The life and work of Vitalii Kulikov are profoundly connected to the Kharkiv Municipal Gallery. Over many years, the gallery hosted his exhibitions, meetings, and artistic discussions. It was also here, eleven years ago, that family members, students, friends, and admirers gathered to bid the artist farewell. We are therefore deeply grateful to the Nuremberg House and the Kharkiv–Nuremberg Partnership Association for the opportunity to organize this exhibition with dignity and care.

Concept

Dis Manibus is a Latin formula of dedication to the spirits of the dead — revered ancestors. In this exhibition, it becomes a voice of memory that continues the conversation. It is a dialogue that affirms presence rather than stages a painful goodbye.
War radically reshapes our perception of the past. Artists who once shaped local scenes become not only authors, but anchors of cultural memory. In this sense, Kulikov appears as one of the Manes — a revered ancestor of Kharkiv and Ukrainian art, whose experience and visual language do not disappear with biography, but continue to operate in the present.
Dis Manibus is an exhibition of remembrance without idealization. It neither canonizes nor confines Vitalii Kulikov to the past. On the contrary, it invites viewers to see how his art resonates with contemporary experiences of loss, resistance, cultural continuity, and the necessity of remembering those on whose shoulders contemporary Ukrainian art stands.
Curator: Ulyana Krucha