MASLO Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Mykola Karabinovich’s “Sweet Pit”. The artist’s focus is on a number of historical figures, including Nicolae Ceausescu, Enver Hoxha, Muammar Gaddafi and Bogdan Khmelnitsky. By attracting the ghosts of dictators and political leaders, Karabinovich examines the nature of power and emphasizes the drama of the moment of its loss. The exhibition creates a scene for speculative historical polyphonic voices, where the individual voices of power figures are joined by a common space. The author describes such a place as a "sweet pit" – a sucking sticky dip, where those who have yielded to the temptation of power are overthrown.
Karabinovich’s project unfolds not only in space but also in time, as the appeal to episodes of different epochs emphasizes the single principle of destroying the personality of a political figure with an irresistible force of power. Loss of power is considered by the artist as an inexorable zenith of the cycle of ownership of unlimited influence.
Mykola Karabinovich (born 1988, Odessa, Ukraine) lives and works in Ghent (Belgium) and in Kiev. The artist works in a variety of media, including video, sound, text and performance. In 2017, Karabinovich was an assistant curator of the 5th Odessa Biennale. In 2018, he was awarded the first PinchukArtCentre Special Award for his work The Voice of Fine Silence. From 2019 he is studying at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. Featured Exhibitions: “From Sea to Sea”, Hit Gallery, Bratislava, “Spring (Summer, Fall, Autumn) of Nations”, BWA, Tarnow, Poland, “Ain’t nobody’s business”, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, (2019) ” The Human Condition, Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow (2018).