“When cities are steeped in roots,
then it is surprisingly easy to hear their silent language…”

Ivan Andrusiak

The history of our city is almost six hundred years old. It is a respectable age. The situation with the absence of its own school of painting and historical continuity, like Lviv, Kyiv, Odesa, Zakarpattia, or Kharkiv, seems all the more strange. And why would it be here, if the first art school in Khmelnytskyi was established only in 1968, and such important concepts as patronage and charity in the field of culture are still unknown to most citizens. Khmelnytskyi is often accused of being provincial. But more often than not, those who say this do not want to notice that the city has recently begun to actively develop and change.

Given that for over 35 years the Khmelnytskyi Regional Art Museum has been the flagship of top-class art events, in 2022 the museum’s gallery ApARTment invites visitors to get to know the works of Khmelnytskyi artists in the OURS project. The exhibited works are not connected by a common theme or gravitation to a particular stylistic direction, but rather are organized according to the principle of polyphonic sound, when each voice leads its own melody.

The vast majority of the artists whose works are presented in the exhibition are not native Khmelnytskyi residents, they received their professional education in various art institutions of Ukraine. However, a certain period of their lives is connected with our city, because it was here that the artists revealed their creative potential to the fullest. And thanks to tireless search, personal artistic self-knowledge and many years of fruitful work, they were able to build a professional vertical that is an integral part of the diverse structure of contemporary Ukrainian art.

At one time, each of the artists presented in the exhibition had their own personal exhibitions at the KhRAM, so we can say with confidence: these are OUR artists. Because despite their individuality, the polyphony of directions, techniques and manners, these people are united by common artistic values and the desire to see Khmelnytskyi on the art map of Ukraine.

Antonina Melnychuk, researcher at the Khmelnytskyi Art Museum