Sergii Sabakar returns to The Naked Room with his solo show Exercises in the Rear, which brings together a series of graphic and animated works. The artist refers to the war not as an event, but as an experience rooted in the body, daily life, and landscape. The title of the exhibition—a touch of self-irony—reflects an attempt to comprehend a complex reality through regular artistic practice. In these ‘exercises’, Sabakar does not seek therapy or escape, but rather explores how war embeds itself in everyday perception, visual language, and personal memory. The works in the exhibition continue a line of thought initiated by Sergii in 2019 during his joint show with Anna Shcherbyna, Travel Notes.
The exhibition consists of several parts: two large-scale graphic landscapes—the sky and the earth—wrapped in black polyethylene; portraits of the artist himself, fellow civilians, and military friends created during their time in the rear; and a series of animations on various gadgets placed on tripods. The cameras on these devices are aimed at the graphic works, yet do not reflect them. Instead, they display scenes from the (now somewhat forgotten) political life of Ukraine—fights and conversations between MPs within the walls of the Verkhovna Rada—easily recognisable and sometimes absurd in their detachment from context.
“Lately, I’ve been searching in my work for things that lead to a subtle kind of joke within serious, perhaps tragic themes. But is it still a joke when you laugh hysterically?” Sabakar comments. “The theme that troubles me and resonates with me is how people can hold aggression towards others. It can be traced through all my works: in landscape, portraiture, and animation. First, I explore the act of aggression itself and whom it is directed at, and second—its consequences.
I decided to wrap the sky and earth in black polyethylene—a material visually familiar from news reports of casualties. These two works seem like a single whole, and at the same time—separate things: what happens on the ground or beneath it, and what happens in or above the sky.”
Sabakar’s graphic landscapes are devoid of natural beauty—they have absorbed the broken geometry of the post-war land. Through a shattered tree, a distorted portrait, a gesture ripped from news footage, the artist breaks down the act of violence into its elements—and leaves the viewer alone with the silence of these images.
