Petro Ryaska is turning 50. According to a time-honoured Transcarpathian tradition, such a jubilee ought to be marked with a large solo exhibition — for example, on such occasions, the local artists’ union provides its members with the Uzhhorod gallery space free of charge. The Naked Room, unfortunately, has neither a branch in Transcarpathia, nor the square footage befitting the celebrant, yet tradition is tradition. So this year, Petro Ryaska’s works will be shown not only within the gallery walls, but also in 14 friendly venues across our beloved Golden Gate district (for which we are immeasurably grateful to our partners). In this way, we shall exhibit two entire series by the artist, offering a substantial representation of Ryaska’s practice and, of course, his performance.
According to Hanna She Thinks Well When Looking at Plain Concrete (2024–25) is a new series of paintings, videos and photographs—and the first in which the central protagonist is the space of the Intourist–Zakarpattya Hotel. Built in 1979 for the Olympic Games in the Soviet capital, designed by the Hungarian architect Mihály Gere, the hotel stood out for its scale and brutalist character, both within Soviet modernism and amid the low-rise comfort of the city of Uzhhorod. Despite its “tired” appearance, the hotel continues to operate for its intended purpose to this day. Since 2016, it has also been home to the Sorry, No Rooms Available residency programme, founded by Petro Ryaska with the participation of Anton Varga. During the years of the full-scale invasion, the residency has provided shelter and a place to work for dozens of artists from occupied, frontline and threatened regions of Ukraine. And despite its dark corridors, Lynchian lobby bar, the smell of over-fried oil in the restaurant, a barely functioning lift, and piles of rubbish on some floors, the “smooth concrete” of its walls still has the power to “inspire” the residency’s guests.
For Petro Ryaska, however, this space carries a rather different meaning. As curator and organiser of the residency, he seems, in the hotel, to set his artistic identity aside. Here, he is seen almost exclusively in a managerial role—with a laptop at a desk, or armed with a drill and mounting tape. The current series, provisionally titled Performance in the Hotel, is therefore a kind of necessary reckoning between the artist and the space to which he has devoted countless working hours. Gazing at the grey, geometrically precise rooms, the remnants of original furniture, and the cityscape framed by the rectangular outline of a balcony, Ryaska juxtaposes the entropy of the modernist space with the vulnerability of his own body as a mature man. Almost contemporaries, the two meet in a shared act of mutual scrutinising and move together towards the same inevitable end. No wonder that the fragility of the human body here seems almost equal to the strength of concrete—just as performance is to painting. Without excessive sentimentality or lofty pathos, this is a story about the tenderness that arises between a special space and a special person.
Dedicated to Friends (2014–25), the second series presented in Kyiv, unfolds along Reitarska, Yaroslaviv Val, Zolotovoritska and Honchara Streets, in a neighbourhood that has, in many ways, shaped us and our community. Ryaska’s painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, created during meetings over the past ten years, here become a symbolic dedication to all those close to us who are not with us now. To those who remain in the city, working despite everything. To those defending us from occupation at the front. And, of course, to those who have given their lives so that we can stage jubilee exhibitions and enjoy Transcarpathian wine.
The works can be seen at Kashtan Wine, Zbirka, TSVITE TEREN, Dasha Katsurina Studio + Showroom, Zigzag Café, Kometa, SYNDICATE, One Tea Tree, Gilda, t.c.pizza, Entropy, attempt, Public Kitchen and The Naked Storage. They are on view during each venue’s regular opening hours.
