Los Angeles Filmforum and Kyiv to LA present *Mykola Ridnyi: The Past, Present.*

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Filmforum partners with Kyiv to LA to welcome the Ukrainian artist Mykola Ridnyi (now based in Berlin) for his first solo show in Los Angeles. Ridnyi’s video work finds powerful and widely-varying approaches to explore the impact of conflicts in Ukraine, those from the distant past, from the Soviet era, from 2014, and today. Throughout, he makes clear how the past suffuses the landscape and people caught in the current war. From explorations of abandoned spaces (*The District*, 2023) to visions of youth today trying to deal with the battles and dead-ends they face (*No Regrets*, 2016, and *No! No! No!*, 2017) to the remarkable poetry slam setting Lord Byron against Pushkin in dueling interpretations of the historical figure of Ivan Mazepa, Ridnyi’s explores collective and personal histories and struggles with empathy and creativity.

A number of films and photography cycles by Mykola Ridnyi are related to his hometown of Kharkiv. The second largest city of Ukraine, and a scientific, cultural and logistical center, Kharkiv became particularly fragile in the context of the Russian war against Ukraine because of its geographical closeness to the border. The body of work created over the past decade is a mix of stories, places and actions, shaping the narrative of people, city and country, and underlines the significance of historical context.

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Mykola Ridnyi was born 1985 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Currently he lives and works in Berlin where he holds a guest professorship for multimedia art in the Berlin University of the Arts.

He graduated from Kharkiv National Academy of Design and Arts in 2008, where he studied sculpture. Since 2005, he has been a founding member of the SOSka group, an art collective based in Kharkiv. The same year he cofounded the SOSka gallery-lab, an artist-run-space in Kharkiv. Under Ridnyi's lead, the gallery-lab was instrumental in the developing the artistic scene in the region before it was closed in 2012. Starting from his curatorial project Armed and Dangerous (2017-2021), Ridnyi begone to develop a platform for collaboration between Ukrainian moving image artists and filmmakers. In 2022 he curated several screening programs of Ukrainian film and video art in DAAD gallery in Berlin, MAXXI Rome, Museum Folkwang Essen, National Gallery in Sofia.

Ridnyi works across media ranging from early collective actions in public space to the amalgam of site-specific installations. Photography and moving image constitute the current focus of his practice. In recent films and images, he experiments with nonlinear montage, collage of documentary and fiction. His way of reflection social and political reality draws on the contrast between fragility and resilience of individual stories and collective histories. More at: https://www.mykolaridnyi.com/

This is an 18+ event

Presented by LA Filmforum and Kyiv to LA

LA Filmforum: Mykola Ridnyi – The Past, Present

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2220 Arts + Archives

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