Businessman and gallerist Victor Pinchuk and his wife Olena Franchuk at the opening of the PinchukArtCentre Prize nominees exhibitions on Oct. 30. Courtesy of PinchukArtCentre, Photo by Serhiy Ilyin In the Oct. 30 issue of the Kyiv Post, columnist Alina Rudya reflected on what she saw at the Art Forum in Berlin. I made similar observations but on a topic that’s much closer to me as a Ukrainian – our nation's very own modern art.

I’m talking about the exhibition of the 20 short-listed nominees for the PinchukArtCentre Prize – the first private national award for young Ukrainian artists. The honor was bestowed by businessman Victor Pinchuk and the art will be displayed until Dec. 20.

Being the biggest and fanciest gallery, PinchukArtCentre is one of the city's major hot spots. Its exhibition openings attract posh crowds – artists, politicians, pop stars, actors, businessmen and socialites. Interest in art among attendees is not a must. Seeing and being seen is what comes first for many in this crowd. But even those who come to the gallery thirsty for art can’t always get satisfaction.

I have to admit that contemporary art often puzzles me. In my opinion, art is something that has a power to impress and remain in your memory forever. When you look at art, you want to behold it. You want to look at it again and again, because it makes you feel different, it inspires you, it can even change your life and view on the world. The principle employed by contemporary art nowadays is entirely different. It’s all about provocation, concept and idea. And that’s not new of course. It all started with artists like Kazimir Malevic (coincidentally born near Kyiv), whose “Black Square” said only one thing: “I thought of it first.” Still, Malevic’s other works show he was an artist as well as a provocateur, while many of his modern counterparts are only the latter. Most of the 20 young modern artists competing for the top PinchukArtCenter prize of Hr 100, 000 seem to follow the “I thought of it first” principle.

One of the most memorable things I saw at Pinchuk’s gallery was the installation of chocolate boxes, opened and laid out on the floor in a big square. Another artist embroidered plain white bed sheets with some meaningless handwritten texts. Embroidering was obviously done with an electric stitching machine, which means any seamstress could do this. Another “textual picture” called “The Theory of Everything” was interesting to look at, but all in all it was just some words and symbols drawn on canvas. Lviv artist Myroslav Vayda came up with one more original art object – a tall cone-shaped construction of wood covered in natural hay. Inside he placed a screen playing video recordings. And that’s another very puzzling trend in modern art – video art. Judging by what I’ve seen so far, any video that has no comprehensible story, but simply shows disconnected objects, events and people is now called "video art."

The more traditional kind of modern art – paintings – was in the minority at the exhibition. The most remarkable representative of this trend was Masha Shubina, a celebrity on the Kyiv art scene. The most interesting feature of her work is that she only paints self-portraits on canvas, Louis Vuitton bags and, most recently, on vinyl record covers. She painted herself into pictures of Soviet era pop divas such as Alla Pugacheva and Sofia Rotaru. Yes, all those self-portraits show the painter’s talent, but her egocentricity is a bit dull. Aleksei Say’s so-called Excel-art – collage prints of graphs and geometrical figures in blindingly bright colors – had something exciting. They could work fine on the wall of some office reception lobby.

As for the photo art, there was no shortage of it at PinchukArtCentre. But again, it was more about concept than actual art. Shapka art group took photos of kids and adults wearing gas masks. Another artist took pictures of young girls and boys in underwear, and without. Ivan Chubukov, currently studying art in Germany presented a series of photographs depicting a piece of white paper folded in a different way on every picture.

I’m sure that a lot of people would object when I say that I just “don’t get it.” Of course, sometimes to “get it” you have to read the press release attached to the artist’s works. They usually give extremely pompous explanations. At times, those texts are nothing but a combination of complicated-sounding philosophical concepts. Call me a simpleton, but do you need explanations to admire works of Dali, Aivazovsky, Da Vinci or Renoir? Of course not. In other words, if it doesn’t impress me as it is, then it's missing something.

Of course, I realize that it’s not just a trend among the Ukrainian artists. The idea of “I thought of it first” prevails in many famous modern art works – just take Damien Hurst with his dead cows and fish. You look at it to get some “shock therapy” and then go home wondering why people spend millions to buy this stuff. Yet they do. The idea nowadays seems to be that everything can be art. But if everything is art, nothing is. It makes me think of the food paintings that Alf (the alien from popular American sitcom) did in one of the episodes, as well as Arseniy Yatseniuk’s awkward presidential campaign posters. They could just as well be included in this exhibition as original political poster art.

I have nothing against encouraging young creative people. Making beautiful things is great, especially compared to wasting your life away by hanging around kiosks, drinking and smoking. I bet that a lot of these artists could make great graphic designers, decorators and illustrators. But shouldn’t there be any standards? So far it seems as if anyone who can draw a funny face on a pillowcase with lipstick, finger paint it with chocolate and display it in a gallery – can call himself an artist.