Karina Synytsia

GOOD-NIGHT MOON

In Stroboskop Art Space.
Warsaw, Poland. 2024

Artists:
Yuriy Bolsa,
Karina Synytsia,
Yuri Yefanov

Curators:
Oleksandra Pogrebnyak
& Katie Zazenski

Before falling asleep, the little one says goodnight to every object around him in his room—a ritual that has become familiar to parents and children around the world. Bearing its title from the classic children’s book illustrated by Clement Hurd and written by Margaret Wise Brown in postwar 1947, "Goodnight Moon" is an exhibition that pays tribute to treasured places and spaces.

Stroboskop—a garage meant for cars, converted into an artist-run space in 2016—is a site where public life and domesticity blurrily coexist, and for this exhibition, hosts three Ukrainian artists: Yuriy Bolsa, Karina Synytsia, and Yuri Yefanov.

Some landscapes become locked in our memories and dreams, stored through acts of naming and remembering. These moments of recollection occur both publicly and privately, as well as across physical and digital spaces, and can shift from utopian to dystopian in an instant. In the wake of Russia's war, safety is barely within one's reach and tomorrow’s morning can’t be relied on.

And so by remembering these significant places, which have largely been relegated to memory, we are offered a moment of stability that is nearly impossible to reach in 2024, both within Ukraine and globally. Through these ritualized acts of care and gratitude, we seek confidence for, and hope in, the future.

In Synytsia’s paintings of the Black and Azov Seas on mass-produced photographic wallpapers, we are reminded of the transience of domestic life and the daydreams that permeate such spaces, especially those which can no longer be accessed. Through Bolsa’s works, we have stories from Chervonograd (renamed to Sheptytskyi in March 2024), a miners’ city in Western Ukraine.

While remaining a relatively safe place, the city has transformed indirectly—through changes in industry or the absence of people as needs for defense continue—leaving these locations remembered from his childhood to disappear almost without a trace.

Yefanov's landscapes of Mohrytsia—a land art symposium site that has become a cherished place for a community of artists over the decades—become a kind of digital compensation. These virtual tours allow to travel to a place which is reachable, as with the work of Sinitsa, now only through the act of remembering.

This exhibition is one of two that are occurring within the framework of Under the Lying Stone, Water Does Not Flow, and are conceptually inspired the books, "I Dream of the Absinthium Fields" by Kateryna Rudenko and "How to Make Rockets Disappear" by Darja Lukjanenko, which are being published by Fundacja Ziemniaki i.

Under the Lying Stone, Water Does Not Flow is implemented by Ziemniaki i and Stroboskop Art Space with the support of IZOLYATSIA foundation, Trans Europe Halles, and Malý Berlín, and co-financed by the ZMINA: Rebuilding program, created with the support of the European Union under a dedicated call for proposals to support Ukrainian displaced people and the Ukrainian Cultural and Creative Sectors.

Exhibition Documentation
By Michał Matejko

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Design & Layout: Denys-Kamyl Levadny