Ilia Chichkan

“Dream” refers to the period of Ilya Chychkan’s work when he was an active member of the Paris Commune community. Unlike Holosiy, Hnylytskyi or Savadov, who were developing a pictorial language that would become the basis for the future New Wave, Chychkan’s activities were mainly concerned with marketing and public relations. At that time, he created works that were completely different in style and form, and instantly sold them to local rich people and Western tourists. Therefore, there are almost no works by Chichkan from the 80s and early 90s.

The global themes of his work at that time were the body, physical mutations and their visual interpretation. They were used by the artist as a metaphor for the processes that accompanied the end of the Soviet era, with their destruction of history and cultural and political collapse.