PinchukArtCentre, a top gallery of contemporary art in Kyiv, founded by billionaire couple Victor and Elena Pinchuk, opened an exhibition of the 21 shortlisted artists of Future Generation Art Prize 2017 on Feb. 24.
Artists from all over the world compete for the main award of total $100,000: The winner gets $60,000 in cash, and $40,000 to be invested in the production of a new piece.
The jury selected 21 nominees out of 4,400 artists from 138 countries who sent their works. The exhibition of the shortlisted artists will go through April 16 in the PinchukArtCentre.
Ukraine is represented by Open Group, an artistic group of five young Ukrainian artists Yuriy Biley, Anton Varga, Pavlo Kovach, Yevgen Samborsky, and Stanislav Turina. Open Group automatically made it to the shortlist as winners of the PinchukArtCentre Prize of 2015, a national contemporary art prize awarded to Ukrainian artists under age of 35.
Most of the shortlisted artists came to Kyiv to share the concepts of their works with the visitors at the opening on Feb. 24. The founder of the gallery, billionaire oligarch Victor Pinchuk, also stopped by to see the exhibition. He refused to comment on his impressions, saying he was cautious not to influence the opinion of the jury. The jury of seven experts will announce this year’s winner on March 16.
The description of the exhibition reads that it “engages with the complexities of the contemporary world and investigates the possibilities of art within it.”
In their works, the artists contemplated on various topics, such as instability of the world, the meaning of the ideology, relations between nature and human-made objects, image of women in the contemporary world.
