Soft Cover, German / English, Glue Binding, 78 Pages, 2023, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König Köln
Mykola Ridnyi
The book to be released in conjunction with the exhibition includes an essay by Daniel Muzyczuk that explores the context of Ridnyi’s new film The District and his interest in the Polish artist Władysław Strzemiński’s (1893–1952) Theory of Vision.
In a conversation with Anna Remešová that was originally published in the Czech online art magazine Artalk seven months after the outbreak of the war, Ridnyi first sketches the idea for the film that now premieres at the Secession. The book contains numerous illustrations as well as an artistic intervention, consisting of a series of postcards showing eight video stills from the artist’s new film The District, a personal exploration of his memories of the largely destroyed district of North Saltivka in Kharkiv, where he lived during his school years. One randomly selected motif is enclosed with each book, like a shared memory.