Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy “Mickey Mouse’s Steppe”

Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy have been working on the monumental project “Museum of Human Civilisation”, since 2020. The artists assume that the end of civilisation is inevitable, so they are designing the Museum for future archaeologists. It is intended to help researchers understand the reasons for its existence and disappearance and to learn about the ways of life and customs of an extinct human species. The future-oriented creations will fill the museum’s successive halls, showing the different areas of life on Earth at a time when mankind still existed…

Exhibition opening: 24/03/2023 (Friday) at 7:00 p.m.
Where: Galeria Labirynt, ul. ks. J. Popiełuszki 5, Lublin
Accessibility: The exhibition is held on the ground floor. Exhibition is unsuitable to visitors with visual impairments. The exhibition is very dark, which can make it difficult to navigate through the space. Large print texts with exhibition information are available from staff. The exhibition is unsuitable to people with sensory hypersensitivity. One of the works emits loud noises. Silent hours at the exhibition apply on Wednesdays from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. In the bookshop you can borrow a wheelchair and earmuffs for free during your stay in the gallery. The gallery has 6 portable induction loops. The gallery has 6 portable induction loops. Opening nad discussion interpreted into English –  please pick up your device at the bookshop before the event; interpreters: Yuliia Shevchuk and Weronika Żminda.
Exhibition on display: until 21/06/2023 (Tue–Sun, 12:00–7:00 p.m.)
Entrance: PLN 5 (free admission to the exhibition opening)

On the opening day at 8:00 p.m., we invite you to a meeting with the artists led by Ksenia Malykh, head of the Research Platform at PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv. Meeting in Ukrainian, interpreted into Polish, interpretation: Volodymyr Dyshlevuk.

Curator: Waldemar Tatarczuk

“Mickey Mouse’s Steppe” is the third realisation within the “Museum of Human Civilisation”. In this work, the artists research the history of armoured battles. Their research reveals that Ukraine is the country where the largest number of such battles in world history took place. The hero of the exhibition, Vladislav Lyubchenko – a resident of Kharkiv – has amassed a huge archive of photographs of destroyed tanks. In the exhibition, the artists juxtapose these photos with obsessive drawings created in 2023 by another Kharkiv resident, Ivan Stygatenko. This is a selection from almost a thousand sketches featuring anthropomorphic representations of tanks.

The archive is completed by the video work “Mickey Mouse Steppe. Seekers”, realised in 2022 in the Kharkiv region. A number of wrecked tanks of the Russian army, which attempted to capture Kharkiv, were left there. The roles of the titular “seekers” of scrap metal are played by the video’s authors, and the source of the metal is abandoned Russian tanks. We see one of them, deformed as a result of shelling it, somewhat resembles Mickey Mouse. Taken as a whole, the elements of the exhibition form a palimpsest in which reality intermingles with fantasy, and horror is juxtaposed with the grotesque.

BIO: Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy are Kharkiv artists who are fusing different formats of artistic practices (installations, reenactment, video, archives), researching the contexts and landscapes of the industrial regions of Ukraine. They graduated from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, majoring in graphic design. In 2012, they created a public page “Pamjat” (Memory) on Vkontakte social network with the aim of researching collective memory on the post-Soviet territory. That project was the starting point of their collaboration. Shortlisted for PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022, holders of the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2020 – public choice award for “Hooligans” project. Winners of the Allegro Prize 2022.