a brief novel of the exploration of a niche, extra-institutional, weird, anonymous and radical art that is abundantly present but unfairly under-spoken.

This kaleidoscope consists of five fanciful stories - with more than twenty characters and formations, whose paths cross and intertwine in direct present, leaving behind a rich trail of art objects, street and gallery actions, documentary chronicles and printed artifacts. This is a continuation of an exploration launched by the curators back in 2016 - and culminating then in a border disaster and a series of enlightening panopticon festivals named after the critical point (480km).

Rita Caterpillar, a Paris-based writer, designer, and art curator, passionately advocates for contemporary non-commercial art and counterculture. With a rich portfolio of over 50 independent scene events, as far as "Post-Materialization Music" vinyl homelabel, "Caterpillar’s & Co" booking agency, and "PostMatFactory" silk-screen printing studio, Rita fosters independent press and explores underground culture. Within Sodaz-Caterpillar Syndicate, Rita organized influential exhibitions like "480 Kilometer", uniting 100+ artists across genres. Forced to flee the war in Ukraine, she founded the international art collective "D.U.S.T." Rita's work embodies a commitment to promoting non-commercial art and exploring artistic communities worldwide.

Anna Sodaz is a UAE-based artist, architect, and curator in mixed media deeply involved in the DIY music scene. Diving into architecture and programming as a base of career has granted her a unique opportunity to craft immersive installations, venturing event management, blending different mediums. As a curator, she co-curated the "Comics Underground" exhibition and an international festival “Optimalinija” in Serbia, also managed stage production for theatrical performances/gigs and vibrant projects, for example Side to Beat, currently focused on stage production in metaverse conсert agency.

Today's virtual adventure will take us behind the scenes to the names being exclaimed out in auction houses as well as the top news reports. The Graffiti Vandal movie, released to the public a few months ago - in a matter of days, it garnered a third of a million views. Bisk's street actions during the Paris pension strikes have been in the world news (Le Monde, Financial Post, Global News, The Art Newspaper). The Venice Biennale, the Center Pompidou and Paris Art Weeks are hosting lectures by contemporary Ukrainian migrant artists (AntiGonna, Igor Gusev), meanwhile the countercultural Ecilop Nationale is exposed to the public at the Palais de Tokyo itself. The incurable punk personality of Stas Podlipsky appears in Swiss private auctions. And all this blends together in an endless vortex of Living.

Numerous exhibits are presented for international viewing for the first time here - in English translation (Gazelle Of Death comic book, Pink Criminal movie, Odessa video archives and memoirs). Only within this pavilion a pleiad of French anonymous artists (Ades, Bisk, Ecilop, Haut de Cave, Jules Hardi), Kyiv party-animals and witnesses of Odessa Renaissance will gather for live-streaming talks (STAY TUNED!). There will also be online premieres of feature-length films. In addition, use the opportunity to take a ride around the pavilion in the artificial reality of Metaverse. And on February 24, join us for the offline event in Paris.


Artists list:
Denis Alekseev «Gazelle Of Death»
Denis Nerobeev
Radyica
Anatoly Belov
Gosha Babanski
Anti Gonna
Alyona Tokovenko
Nadiya Shoshyna
Peter Shirkovsky
Igor Gusev
Stas Podlipsky
Alexandr Topilov
Alisa Pavlovskaya
EliKuka
Eugene Kukoverov
Andrey Kuzkin
Jules Hardi
Ades
Ecilop Nationale
Bisk
Plume «ArtPocalypse»

ANATOLIY BELOV
Born 1977 in Kyiv, Ukraine, where he recently lives and works - before fleeing to Austria since the war started. He received degrees from the Republican Taras Shevchenko Art School and the National Technical University of Ukraine. He has been a member of the artists groups R.E.P., Penoplast and Emblika Quali. Belov participated in residencies of the Centre for Contemporary Art founded by George Soros in Kyiv (2005) and the Rotor association for contemporary art in Graz (2009).

Through his drawings and paintings, Anatoliy Belov reveals an uncensored freedom of fictional and autobiographical narratives, developing a world of unbridled sexual exploration. Using the artistic medium as a weapon in the personal struggle of a homosexual within a closed homophobic society, Belov appears as a lost romantic dreaming of freedom and love.

GEORGE BABANSKI
Gosha Babanski (b.1986, Ukraine) is director, script-writer and musician currently based in Сhartres, France. Anatoly Belov (b. 1977, Ukraine) currently based in Lublin, Poland.

Belov's and Babanskyi’s works often take the form of musical performances, graphic works, and video works. Together they founded the queer-pop project “Lyudska Podoba” (Human Likeness), which was the first queer musical band in Ukraine.

"Is a long-term social project in the format of a baby book. It is a reflection and commentary on the experience of violence in the artist's childhood. "Artbook contains my personal and family photos, drawings, memories, texts-reflections on the experience of violence during childhood. In many ways, the stories collected in the album and the method of work I used
became the basis for the emergence of my creative identity - AntiGonna, with whom I work now. "

Anti Gonna (production AntiGonStaff) is a way to deal with trauma, and a ritual to keep the existen - tial dread at bay, rendering it fictional.

"Under an alias Anti Gonna I’m exploring dimen - sions of sexual fears, perversions and taboos - things that are repressed by the public opinion as deviant traits.

My work is autobiographical, but my imagery is strictly metaphorical and used as means of expression. I think taboos are keeping our minds trapped, therefore they require illumination and not omission, which should allow us to medicate or at least under- stand the repressed “I” a bit better. "

"Body borders, trauma, identity, dysfunctionality, the "healed" body and vulnerability - these concepts are central to the work of performer Alexandra Martini, visual artist Alyona Tokovenko and pianist Masako Ohta - each in their own media. Within the framework of Skin Care - Body Borders, they brought their artistic forms of expression into dialogue with each other on an equal footing.

They created their own stage language of sound, voice, haptics and light. In a half-hour performance Martini, Ohta and Tokovenko go through different questions: Is the skin my boundary, the vessel of my self? Where do I blur, where do I have a contour? Does my skin protect me from trauma, from parasites, or do I allow contact and permeability? What body does sound have? How to display a horror that has inscribed itself in the body?"

Igor Gusev is a well-known Ukrainian artist, a poet, the author of performances, films, objects and installations, a participant and an organizer of the numerous art actions, the leader of the movement “Art Raiders”, the founder of the underground gallery “Norma”. Gusev has been appealing to his distinctive manner for the last five-seven years. However, as a starting point of it according to the opinion of some art critics is considered the work “A Car and a Cat” painted in 1998.From the first glance the paintings of Gusev may resemble to be classical fine art. But in a moment you realize you’ve been misled by masterful technique. Idyllic scenes filled with peace and irony here and there are ruined by colorful stripes, noise and digital errors.

Igor Gusev was born in Odessa. He graduated from Odessa Grekov Art College.
Regular participant of the major exhibition projects, such as “Restart”, “Space Odyssey”, “Independant”, “20 Years of Presence”, special project of The First Kyiv International Biennale of Contemporary Art ARSENALE 2012 “Double Game”, Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art, “The Days of Ukraine in Great Britain”.
Igor Gusev has been participating in exhibitions since early 90s and is the representative of the New wave of the Ukrainian contemporary art. In 2013 was rated in the Top 25 of the Most Successful Artists of Ukraine according to the art-website www.hudruk.org. At the moment he lives and works in Odessa.

My documentary "Graffiti vandal, the invisible steps" is my attempt to answer this existential question. So never, perhaps, I will know if I succeeded. Although?"

Insoluble mystery, but very real attempt.
The documentary is there, and now belongs to the community, to the graffiti of yesterday, of today, and I hope so, of the next dawns.
However, it will never belong to "knowing" graffiti artists, holders of the true truth, defining what is graffiti and what is not, just as closed-minded as miserable, despising the audacity of the bravest of them. To those, whom I will never let in.

My approach as a director wanted to be as objective, fair and equitable as possible... which is impossible. This creation is inevitably subjective, necessarily arbitrary, and no doubt pretentious.

Perhaps this film will be a building block for the graffiti subculture. I will be proud of it. Future graffiti artists will decide. Nobody else.

The stars of this film are called the Punchlines du Périph, Marianne Pleure, ZEN, D3 Crew, Ecilop, Krade, Moniq. They are also anonymous; those who was there, who kept my hard drives, who sometimes held my camera, those who gave me feedback, etc... etc... etc... Anonymous, but so much really existing

I started thinking about this project in 2017, the start of the film's development is dated from May 2020. This project will follow me for too many years. [...] one last project to close, then I'm out. Tired of thinking, until I overdrink, I'm about to bandage my face."

–
When I was 17, I enrolled at the Arcades art prep school in Issy Les Moulineaux. I was already painting in the streets, but my little suburb of Cergy Préfecture had nothing to do with the big game going on in Paris. So I met some painters there and learned a lot from them, including that you could walk out of the supermarket with an impressive number of things in your underpants, or that street painting was often more discreet during the day in Paris. They told me to forget about the Beaux Arts, and three months later I joined the Beaux Arts in Toulouse.
There I developed and refined my conception of political art. For me, art has to take risks so as never to forget the crucial nature of the subjects it tackles. Artists such as the Yes Men, Farewell, or the Reclaim The Street collective pushed me to intervene in the world, to develop an art rooted in life.

After passing my DNAP, I left school for the sea and sailing boats. For three years, I lived most of the time on the Corsican and Breton coasts. But in the winter of 2018 I returned to Paris, sleeping on a friend's sofa. That's when I started painting upside-down police cars on Paris rooftops. First with a pole, then following a magical discovery on a rooftop in the 10th arrondissement, using ropes. It was the knowledge gained from boating that a rope can withstand even the worst storms that prompted me to suspend myself from the makeshift harness I'd built. I began rappelling like a true prehistoric man.

Two years later, I moved back to Paris and joined the Kourtrajmé school. I was sleeping at my grandmother's, so I decided to take up my Précair'Immo project started in Toulouse and build myself an apartment in the metro. Thanks to the Kourtrajmé school, I was lucky enough to take part in the “Jusqu'ici tout va bien” exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, and other opportunities followed, including a solo show at the Galerie ERBK “Avant que la surveillance ne soit totale” and an exhibition at 35-37 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, “Les armées du vivant”.

Today, I’m living in a squat in Ivry. We're a collective that lives and creates together, and we try to act on our area. We organize art workshops, exhibitions and free markets. For me, this collective is an unparalleled source of emulation. To be honest, I almost never work alone. All my projects are the fruit of collaboration, discussion and shared play.
–

BISK is a visual artist from the southern suburbs of Paris. He entered the graffiti culture in 2007 and, since then, this artist has not stopped setting up original projects. In 2021, he transforms a huge vacant lot into an open-air exhibition space. The whole terrain then becomes a marvelous world.

In the spring of 2023, he repeats an immersive experience, this time in a bar in the second arrondissement of Paris, entirely covered from floor to ceiling with posters torn from the metro and amalgamated, painted, to create a strange cave, populated by monsters made up of advertising papers.

His various interventions are widely relayed by the media as they are astonishing, ambitious and controlled. His touch is identifiable, marked by his strong personality and his abundant universe which does not leave the slightest detail aside. Paintings, sculptures, wood, metal, installations, he is a multidisciplinary artist, who handles the bomb as well as the saw or the soldering iron.

Evolving until now outside the conventional circuits, it is here his pictorial universe that we begin by presenting to you, a real gateway to the discovery of this bubbling artist whose name circulates until now like a well-kept secret. by art lovers.

Biography by © Sophie Roussard