Kristina Podobed + Olena Klochko | Crashed heaven | Galerie Z22 | 10.06.-09.07.2023 (until 27.07. by arrangement)

KRISTINA PODOBED

She started her photographic journey in 2011, mainly documenting herself and her female friends. Even if your stance on bodies, nakedness and sexuality in photography is free-spirited enough, Kristina’s Podobed photography are there to catch you off-guard, to push you to the boundaries where intimacy and vulgarity suddenly merge to create a rough and honest image. It is the photographers walking that fine line who end up challenging society’s moral status quo – and it’s those photographers that we need the most today.
In 2015 and 2016 Kristina studied at International Summer School of Photography in Latvia (Jim Goldberg and Anouk Kruithof workshops ) Currently Kristina lives and works in Brest, France

A disturbing strangeness of being.

Kristina Podobed, © Galerie Z22

OLENA KLOCHKO

Olena Klochko (Oleklo) was born in Bakhmut, Donetsk region . She took a degree in languages and worked as a translator for some time. She was doing drawing and painting, based on her own self-taught methods.
Her first official solo show took place in Kursk in 1994 . In 1996 Lena moves to Saint Petersburg, the cultural capital of the post-soviet period and along with the city enjoys a short period of freedom and hope.
The she was working as a fashion designer, studing at Stieglitz Academy of Art and Design , later she graduated from High School of Directors and Screenwriters in Moscow.

An artist and a film director, Olena established herself on the late 90s – early 2000s St Petersburg art scene as a fashion designer, performer and painter. She worked mainly with textiles, launching her projects Spring on the Runway (collection of dresses-paintings), Eva Braun (a multi genre event combining fashion and feminist performance) named cult in media, Naked Lunch (textile pictures exhibition and performance), Paleolithic (collection of costumes-sculptures combined with performance).
These projects were received with enthusiasm in the art circles, gained critical acclaim and were highly popular among the public.
Later Olena was working in the film industry, released several documentaries and made on youth drama that was not released due to crusual changes that started in Russia since 2013.

In 2015, deeply moved by the events of the 2014 Russian- Ukrainian war in her native area, Olena moved back to Ukraine. Here she conceived a pivotal multimedia project “Beautiesandbeast” (2017-2019), which consists of the series of paintings and performance-based movie(44’).
She continued making art and took an active position on the fast-evolving Ukrainian art scene, exhibiting in Kiyiv and other cities in Ukraine and abroad. In 2021 Olena became the curator of the Thin Red Line art project, which aimed to investigate and promote contemporary art of the Eastern Ukraine and to establish the Art School of the Eastern region of Ukraine.
The main topic of Olena Klochko’s work is human portraiture. Her portraits deal with psychological implications of existence in a body, the material appearance of a human being in this world.
In summer 2022 Olena left Bakhmut, in autumn her studio and house were destroyed by shellings, she was lucky with the support of her friends to evacuate her art-studio and Thin Red Line art-project to Berlin, where she now lives, trying to find a new ground under her feet and goes on making her art.

Opening: Saturday, 10. June 2023, 7pm until 10pm

Exhibition dates: Saturday, 10. June 2023 – Sunday, 09. July 2023 / to be visited by appointment during the gallery holidays until 29 August 202