"Revisionist Syndrome" is a story of N., who lived in Stanislaviv and Lviv during the interwar and Soviet periods. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, N. witnessed artistic life in Galicia (Halychyna) during his student days, including the modernist experiments of the ‘artes’ association and the Krakow Group. In the 1970s we find N. in the role of the designer of ideological posters and decorations in one of the factory clubs in Soviet Ivano-Frankivsk. Also during this period N. has been a patient of the local psychoneurological dispensary, where his life later ends.
It was then that N. made his only contribution to the history of art - from memory he reconstructed the modernist works seen by him in various exhibitions during his youth. At the same time N. was diagnosed with revisionist syndrome, a mental disorder in which the patient is convinced that their narration of historical events really influences the facts of the past and, accordingly, changes the current state in the present.
According to N.'s memories, in 1931 a unique exhibition was held in Stanislaviv, which unitied works by representatives of the Polish-Galician and Soviet Ukrainian artistic avant-garde. The only (relatively) credible proof of the existence of this exhibition is the radio program of an Eastern Ukrainian journalist, found in the Kharkiv archives with the participation of Yuri Andrukhovych.
N.'s artistic contribution was researched by Nikita Kadan. He initiated the first exhibition of N., but the main condition of the family was the non-disclosure of his name.
During December 2021, 54 visual works and one radio recording were presented in the central exhibition hall of the Ivano-Frankivsk Local History Museum. This catalog is a documentation not only of the exhibition, but also a description of the work and life story of N.
Installation shots and the opening event
