01 June 2026
While Lviv is opening new galleries and cultural spaces during the war, Odesa is increasingly losing the dynamics of its artistic life. In an interview with Intent, gallery owner, curator and musician Pavlo Gudimov talks about the crisis of the city's cultural environment, the exhibition of Andriy Sahaidakovsky at the Odesa National Art Museum, the Ukrainian presence at the Venice Biennale, the role of private collections and art during the war. He also talks about the phenomenon of Ivan Marchuk, the controversy surrounding Mykhailo Reva, the film Ocean of Elsa: Observations of the Storm, the future museum of Ukrainian rock, and his own return to funk.
Pavlo, when I was preparing for our conversation, I remembered an interview with Yuriy Leiderman from Odesa. He told me that for many years he had been discussing the idea of organizing a paired exhibition with Andriy Sahaidakovsky-a kind of dialogue between the Odesa and Lviv art worlds. And now Sahaidakovsky is in Odesa, but with his personal project Between Objects. How do you, as a curator, feel about the idea of such a dialog between Leiderman and Sahaidkakovsky? And are you ready to realize this tandem someday, despite the fact that Leiderman is now in Berlin?
Sahaidakowski told me that there was just such a proposal, but I understand that he is not considering it yet. Nikita Kadan has also been tossing around this idea quite often, but it's not so easy to create a tandem. I think everything will take its time. Andriy generally likes pair exhibitions, but he approaches it very carefully and scrupulously.
And today in Odesa we see Sahaidakovsky's solo... without Sahaidakovsky himself. You may know that Andriy hates to leave Lviv at all. He uses the excuse that he is 69 years old and doesn't want to go anywhere. His last trip, I remember, was a couple of years ago to Rome for a residency and an exhibition at the MAXXI Museum of Contemporary Art. He came back from there all shaken up, in negative emotions. He said: "I can't go there, it's hard for me at this distance. I went there just so they could stand and take pictures with me like a monkey." In other words, he felt that foreigners did not fully understand our context.
Pavlo Gudimov shows the works of Andriy Sahaidakovsky. PHOTO: Natalia Dovbysh
At the same time, Sahaidakovsky is increasingly appearing in foreign contexts. About a year and a half ago, a specialized German magazine was published entirely devoted to him (before that, such an issue was published about Pavlo Makov). There was a lot of material there, and the entire issue was illustrated with his works. By the way, half of the works that are now hanging in Odesa were full-page. Germans know how to present everything in detail.
But Andriy is absolutely rooted in Lviv. It would be wrong to say that he is in the context of Odesa or the South. However, for an artist, this position is excusable. He is so intrinsically Lviv, although he wants to be seen everywhere. At one time , Oleksandr Roitburd really appreciated Andrii, and the Odesa Art Museum bought his works for its collection long ago. Since then, the idea has been kicking around: "Let's show Andriy in Odesa".
I see how this art simultaneously provokes people to talk, but it is difficult. In Europe, this has long been a museum format. In Kyiv, at the Arsenal, his last exhibition on half of the first floor was also perceived as difficult, although it was much lighter.
The professional context accepts Andriy very well, and if we talk about the general audience, they have not seen him before and they are not seeing him now. So for us, this is an important way out of the bubble. Will we reach the mass audience? No, we won't. But neither Andriy nor I have the task of making this art massive, popular, or understandable. It's definitely not about Sahaidakovsky.
Why was the space of the Art Museum chosen for the exhibition in Odesa? What does it add to the project and has it changed in the dialog with this space?
These are very important questions in terms of Sahaidakovsky's creative method and how I had to curate this project. Andriy even had to be persuaded a bit, because last year he had a big project at the Lviv National Art Gallery and was internally dissatisfied with something. Dissatisfaction is a normal process for an artist who sets himself a high standard. He said: "No, I don't want to do it now, let's do it next year." So now it's 2026, and the offer to organize an exhibition came directly from the museum. I am extremely pleased. There used to be an era when you ran around asking: "Let's show it, let's show it," but the museum had its own plans. The Odesa National Art Museum clearly formulates its requests. Sahaidakovsky's exhibition "Between Objects" is the third event in our joint cycle of YaGallery and the museum. The first was an exhibition by Volodymyr Semkiv, the second by Dmytro Moldovanov, and now by Andriy Sahaidakovsky.
About the space: Andriy no longer remembered the museum's halls, and when we showed him photos of the grand ballroom, the ceremonial hall, he said: "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, this hall needs to be neutralized somehow. Just paintings on the walls won't do, we need a spatial solution." His archives of unrealized ideas contain many ideas. He works not only with his rugs, but also with installations, which are very simple in terms of materials but deep in philosophy.
Here, he decided that the first hall is an introductory one, where only texts and a few works that introduce his work are needed. But the second room should not be left in its classic ceremonial form. At our third meeting-he is an architect by training, so he studied the plans, photographs, and the museum's additional stock of furniture and mirrors in detail-he said: "Okay, there is one piece that I have been planning to realize for a long time.
It has no direct relation to evacuation packages or the Bicentennial, although we don't take away people's right to interpret. His idea is a black cirate and a rope that wraps everything up. Andriy insisted to the end: "There is no need to explain anything. Everyone will come in and think for themselves." Someone will decide that the exhibition has just arrived and has not been unpacked; someone will think about evacuation; someone will draw parallels with insect disinfection, which is often done in museums. Andriy himself joked: "This is so that unnecessary objects in the palace do not distract from the art."
His instructions were strict: there should be few paintings, they should act as a point of interest. Thank God, his paintings on the mats are so large-scale that one or two images take up the entire wall. We clearly followed his instructions: how to twist the center, which rope to take. Usually at the Arsenal, he painted on the walls himself, but since this is a palace and you can't paint on the walls, he said: "You can do it yourself." Given his creative approach, the exhibition looks exactly as if he had mounted it himself.
Did he like it? You must have shown him the photos, right?
No, I didn't show him anything. He doesn't use a smartphone, he has a regular push-button phone. This is his principled position: "Why do I need all this fuss and bother?" He is not on social media.
The studio is his most comfortable and happy environment. He doesn't want to leave because the outside world disharmonizes and distracts him. If you want to talk to him, come to his studio in the morning. If he wants to talk, he knows that he can always come to us at YaGallery. It's very convenient.
Perhaps if we all didn't have cell phones, we would continue to communicate in this way: we would just know each other's habitat and come to visit.
Pavlo, let's be honest. The security situation and the general state of Odesa today are very different from Lviv. People here live in a completely different mode of anxiety, which greatly affects their inner state and readiness to perceive art.
First of all, my position and the position of our fellow artists is clear: we cannot stop and wait for the time when everything will be fine. We have to create this time ourselves. The program of our partnership with Ukrainian museums has been in place since the year YaGallery was founded (2007), and we will not change anything. We realize that the security situation is terrible. But I really love museums, and artists see them as a great meeting point with the audience - a kind of outpost of our culture. It's great when people have an outlet. You can't live in tension all the time.
Secondly, Odesa is a city that lost a lot during the war. It lost artists, art managers, and collections that were evacuated or hidden in funds. This void needs to be compensated for.
Pavlo Gudimov. PHOTO: Natalia Dovbysh
The situation in Lviv is really different. Over the past 2.5-3 years, there has been a real boom in art spaces there. Last spring, the Association of Gallerists commissioned a study of the Ukrainian art market, and we were amazed: at that time, the number of galleries in Lviv had increased by more than 40%. Now new spaces are opening almost every two months. This is due to the large number of people.
Odesa, on the other hand, until the conventional tourist season began, looks like it was put on hold. And you can feel it when you look at the state of the architectural heritage. It's scary to see holes in the buildings of the historic center: there are no walls, but you can see an apartment with a chandelier hanging, a wardrobe and a hanging carpet. It looks like a terrible, unwanted installation of conceptualism. In Kharkiv, Kyiv, or Lviv, they try to heal such wounds very quickly, but here the process is more complicated and takes longer.
But even more terrible than the consequences of the fighting is the mass irresponsible attitude of the residents themselves towards their city. This has been going on for the last four years, it's a huge old problem. The terrible condition of some facades, peeling entrances to commercial premises on the ground floors, holes cut right through the central facades, wire routes through entrances, the absence of original gates...
Odesa is a real gem. You can just come here, walk around with your head held high, read its history, enjoy the sea and socialize. But how can you not love your city so much? The authorities blame the residents, the residents blame the authorities, but this is not constructive.
Lviv, where I have lived for the past six years, also has a lot of problems: balconies are falling down, and facades need restoration of engineering systems. But there is a dialog between the community, activists, and the authorities. A lot depends on people who are willing to give their time and knowledge to preserve the heritage. I would like to see effective cases in Odesa, where people simply take it upon themselves to lovingly restore their entrance or courtyard to pass it on to the next generations.
You can't change the mentality with one interview, it's a matter of trends. Lviv is lucky that the trend for heritage was once launched by active artists, including Volodymyr Kostyrko. He first explained to businesses (coffee shops, restaurants) that authentic heritage adds value to their business. Over time, this grew into cultural, public, and museum spaces in the so-called Lviv style. Everyone realized that preserving the remnants of Austria-Hungary works better than imitating the new.
You've really hyped up the Lviv Sculpture Week. If you were to venture to bring this festival to Odesa, where would you start? And in continuation of the topic, what is your attitude to the "main sculptor" of Odesa, Mikhail Reva?
Mikhail Reva does very different things. I recently visited an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Odesa dedicated to Sonia Delaunay, where several of his objects are presented - they are very nice, this direction is close to me. If we're talking about his commercial, urban sculpture, it's not close to me at all. These are commercial orders. Perhaps this is acceptable for an artist, but I take a more idealistic position.
Nevertheless, Reva is undoubtedly an interesting and important character for the city, he is looking for where to go and how to change.
But his works that are in the urban space of Odesa rather sow a salon-like bad taste. Because of this, people don't understand the difference between high-quality, complex plastic and interior art. Then it is very difficult to teach the public that public space is created for problematic works. As Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi says: "Sculpture takes on a lot of social negativity, and it's good - it releases it."
However, the Sculpture Week is created not to release negativity, but to bring contemporary art to the people so that they can see an alternative to the monuments of the independence era, which, strangely enough, simply repeat the socialist realist method, but with new characters.
The festival is all-Ukrainian: recently we discussed new objects with Vasya Dmytryk from Odesa that we want to show in Lviv; Serhiy Radko from Cherkasy region is joining us; authors from Kyiv and Kharkiv, as well as Germans, Lithuanians, and Czechs participate.
In Lviv, this festival became possible because the city machine clearly works to support it and is not afraid of scandals. As for Odesa or Kyiv: there are private requests like "let's bring it and show it," but the authorities are not ready for this. Most city officials in Ukraine are very fearful people. As soon as the first angry posts by residents in the style of "what have you put here" appear on social media, officials turn tail. That is, you have to have the balls to put contemporary art on the streets and not be fazed by the first hate.
Art heals spaces and people, it has a tremendous therapeutic effect against the deep traumas of war, it just doesn't work like a pill, its effect is hard to see instantly.
The central part of Odesa is also ideal for contemporary art, it just needs to be cleaned up and thought over. But Odesa can't cope on its own, there are few artists left here, and projects should be all-Ukrainian. So call me-I'm ready to share my experience.
In Odesa, everyone survives on their own, there is no large-scale consolidation of the art community. What is the main problem: internal strife, lack of strategy, or passivity of the authorities?
The Lviv Association of Gallerists was formed before the war as an internal need of the professional community for healthy communication, not at the suggestion of the authorities. One man in a field is not a warrior, only the concentration of professionals allows us to launch strategic projects.
I don't know the essence of Odesa's internal squabbles that deeply, but I can state the fact that Odesa has powerful collectors, art dealers, and museums, but there are no galleries. It seems that the local climate itself prevents people from sitting down at the same table and starting to do something together. You need to have the will and the balls to do this. Maybe everything is fine with eggs in Odesa, but there are problems with the will to consolidate.
Either a new generation will come and refresh the process, or everything will continue to fade away. The fact that even small antique shops have closed in the city is a bad sign. The authorities are not in a good mood right now, so don't wait for someone to take you by the hand. Go to your neighbor and create collaborations yourself. Due to the lack of such a tradition, Odesa residents go to Lviv to open galleries, such as Berliner Strasse Gallery, and easily join our association, which is already all-Ukrainian.
Culture cannot be spread evenly over the bread of the whole country, like butter. There are always big cultural centers where people go to consume art. Odesa critically lacks a specialized higher education institution for its development. This was a mistake of the Soviet network that should have been broken back in 1991. Back then, a strong-willed decision was made to open an Academy of Arts in Dnipro and at least an Academy of Arts in Odesa. The Kharkiv-Kyiv-Lviv line is too small for such a large country. The presence of an academy would have radically changed the situation in the South. And while it is not there, while there is no support from the authorities and no community support, the museum remains the only outpost. But when an artist cannot exhibit and sell his or her work through a gallery in their city, the art market will not function.
In addition, we are now experiencing a huge shortage of personnel in culture. Many professionals have left, many have died, are at war, or have changed their field of activity. It is a huge job to replenish this resource. That is why I am now paying a lot of attention to the cultural education of children, consulting schools in Lviv and conducting test classes. For example, we will soon have our first school rock festival.
Today, many Odesa collectors are in a quandary: it is difficult and expensive to take collections abroad, it is risky to keep them at home under fire, and state museums do not have the resources for safe storage. Are we in danger of losing a whole layer of private collections? Who buys art nowadays?
The process of emergence of collectors is continuous: old patrons have left, but new, young ones are appearing. It's a sin to complain about the Ukrainian market in general. Perhaps the situation in Odesa is worse because of the massive departure of people and the lack of a well-developed offer on the ground. But when you offer collectors a really cool product, they are interested in it, even if they are physically in Cannes right now - Odesa still remains in their hearts.
The main problem is that there is no state program for working with private collectors in Ukraine. What needs to be done?
Establish a dialogue and legitimize private collections for a certain period of time. Help them sort them out, give important works the status of national treasure and, under a contract, take them for free state storage (in particular, in safe Western storage facilities). Most collectors do not have the experience or resources of Viktor Korsak in Lutsk, who managed to build a huge private museum. They need operators.
Create a network of museums of private collections in cities with the highest concentration of collectors. Many of them have been scared since the 90s, and we know nothing about them.
To offer legally clear models for exhibiting private collections in state art museums with named halls and preserving the integrity of collections. World history proves that this is a working model. Collectors are fanatical and responsible people; they don't want their children to sell or disperse their collection after their death. They want to remain in history.
The absence of such a policy on the part of the Ministry of Culture and museums will lead to enormous losses for the state museum fund. In this country, almost everything relies on private collectors.
If the state meets such people halfway, we will open so many masterpieces that there will be queues. In addition, it is a powerful lever for regulating and revitalizing the entire art market.
Recently, the media have been actively discussing the Ivan Marchuk phenomenon again. What is your professional attitude to this figure?
First of all, this is not a phenomenon, but a story promoted by the masses, based on an old publication in a foreign edition, where he was included in a list of "hundreds of geniuses." The society picked up on this juggling with the word "genius" and perpetuated the stereotype.
My professional position is that the role of Ivan Marchuk in Ukrainian contemporary art is very overrated. He has long been a meme, a purely marketable figure. Crowds go to his exhibitions, and his trademark "plein air" is perceived as some kind of incredible revelation. For me, as a professional, there is only one short period in his work that is interesting - some of his early abstract pieces. When he was not exploiting endless huts and images. At his exhibition at the Arsenal, I was surprised how these interesting abstractions were lost against the background of salon Plein Air.
About the idea of creating the National Ivan Marchuk Museum. Usually, such personalized museums are created privately in order to fuel commercial interest and capitalize on the artist's works on the market. At the national level, the state should focus on expanding and supporting the already existing large institutions, such as the Odesa, Lviv, and Kyiv art museums. And their expert councils should decide for themselves whose branches or named halls to open. Marchuk certainly plays his role as a prominent commercial figure, his works are bought for fabulous sums of money, and that's not bad. But his influence on contemporary artistic processes in Ukraine and the world is minimal.
How do you assess our representation at the Venice Biennale in recent years? Does Ukraine manage to move from the role of a victim to the position of a strong cultural player?
You can see for yourself that we are not leaving the role of a victim, but rather actively exploiting this role. I have long emphasized that the Venice Biennale should showcase strong personal projects that demonstrate the real artistic level and artistic power of contemporary Ukraine, in addition to exclusively sociopolitical reflections. But the Ministry of Culture and its expert group have their own specific view.
For example, Zhanna Kadyrova is an extremely talented artist, but her real curatorial range is much wider than the project that was eventually presented in Venice. She needed to be given a separate large palace for a large-scale staff so that the whole world could see her true power.
I know that you are not happy with the documentary Ocean of Elsa: Watching the Storm". Why do you think that they left out a whole page of the band's history, in particular, the period of your enormous popularity in Russia?
There are a lot of white spots there, I've already given several detailed interviews on this subject. It should have been made into a series for a cable channel, then it would have looked cool. As it was, it turned out to be an emotional chronicle, a good advertising ploy, rather than an analytical documentary. The drama and directing suffer considerably.
But the main thing is that the film does not formulate the true phenomenon of "Ocean Elsa" at all. We were one of the first (not the only ones, of course, but the first serious ones) to create a real boom for Ukrainian music in Russia in the early 2000s. And we came there as a serious rock band with deep lyrics, a signature sound, and an adult attitude to the profession. The producers and Svyatoslav Vakarchuk decided to minimize this whole era, mentioning only our concert in Sheremetyevo. It's ridiculous and unfair compared to the triumph we had there.
However, our popularity in Russia dramatically changed the situation within Ukraine itself. In the early 2000s, the Ukrainian media market was looking back to Russia: "What do they listen to there?" And when Okean Elzy became an authority and trendsetter in the Russian music environment, we began to be listened to en masse at home. Our success there paved a powerful bridge to the Russified regions of Ukraine, where people began to discover the Ukrainian language through OE's songs.
Did you ever have a desire to organize a big exhibition about the phenomenon of Ukrainian rock yourself?
Yes, and I've talked about it many times. Ukrainian rock has long been in need of serious museumization, we have unique artifacts, documents and stories. I am glad that there are people like Yurko Roketsky in the younger generation. He is now the vocalist of the Dead Rooster and also plays bass in my band Gudimov. Yurko has published a wonderful research book, "All Clear. Serhiy Kuzminsky and the Gadyukin Brothers" and is currently working on a monograph about VV. An in-depth analytical book is a great format because you can't fit everything into a movie.
During the time of Oleksandr Roitburd, the halls of the Odesa Art Museum hosted an outrageous performance band called Hamerman Destroys Viruses. Where do you draw the line between artistic experimentation and provocation as a musician and curator?
"Hamerman is a pure performative format, where the primary focus is not so much on music as on shock, theater and shows. It's a cool genre.
My own music is a classical song form that reflects the same values that I talk about in my curatorial projects. It's hard to talk about your music, you have to listen to it. Now I play an acoustic apartment show in Kyiv, two weeks ago we gave a concert as a group in Zagreb, and before that I played guitar for our community in London.
Now I've written a completely new program, I'm very much inspired by funk. We have already made fresh arrangements. I am now interested in moving away from the usual melody, adding powerful guitar riffs and recitative. I have a lot of plans.
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