Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach

10.09 - 19.12.26

Rue Veydt 15, 1060 Brussels

Liturgie des jours brings together the work of Sasha Kurmaz and Danylo Halkin, two Ukrainian contemporary artists, in the gallery’s central nave. Each offers a witness to the conflict that has engulfed their daily realities, Kurmaz through a daily practice rooted in found photography and collage, and Halkin through a deep engagement with the history of stained glass in the region. Taken together they offer a prismatic and meditative encounter with the lived experience of war.
 
Sasha Kurmaz’ Red Horse is a ritualistic daily practice. The artist has been making collages each day since the beginning of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He gathers found images, handwritten notes and his own photographs and layers them onto found cardboard and other materials. The series is a single work, a statement made of hundreds of individual collages that the artist has pledged to continue to make until the war stops. The first part of the work, 464 collages, is exhibited here in its entirety for the first time. 
 
The themes range from direct documentation of the destruction around him, to meditations on the psychology of violence, and the endurance of the mundane.  The artist calls it “a diary of life” rather than a diary of war, reminding us that this is vital, quotidian reality — the diaristic shaping of a consciousness. Read more...

Sasha Kurmaz, The Red Horse, 2022–2026, ongoing.