KIRILL PROTSENKO. IMPASSIONED

ARBITER ELEGANTIAE

“Kirill Protsenko is an artist who—quite easily and eloquently—fulfilled himself across different art fields, as it happens only with deep and educated people, whose inner workings, analysis, and artistic gestures are often perceived as effortless by others. Inasmuch as the result is optimal, harmonious, and easy, like a butterfly’s wingbeat. As if it wasn’t worth the effort.

For me, Protsenko was Petronius, the arbiter elegantiae of my time, of my Kyiv. He denied the importance of taste: “Taste is a myth. It’s an interactive thing that constantly changes. It is difficult to say something definitive about this.” But this was exactly what proved that he had good taste. Any dogma is tasteless, for taste is refined with the change of the world, with the course of time, and with the development of art and technology. Kirill felt that pulse naturally, embodying it in installations, object and interior designs, videos, collaborations with music labels, and parties. And, of course, taste is a rod rather than a weather vane. Therefore, Protsenko kept up with the times understanding the continuity of history and art, where all things don’t appear from nowhere and once for all cancel what was before, but absorb, reinterpret, and remake.

In 2002, the art expert Natalia Smirnova wrote about his exhibition: “In general, his artistic statement is witty in intention and expression. Protsenko hasn’t compromised his role as a subtle conceptual artist with no signs of movement storm in his pursuit of furor.” The words that characterize Kirill Protsenko’s whole life.”

Kostiantyn Doroshenko, August 2017

Mystetskyi Arsenal. Kyiv, 2018