YURIY KRUCHAK and IULIIA KOSTERIEVA | Open Place Ukraine

The performative works of Yuriy Kruchak and Iuliia Kosterieva in public space transform the
audience into the actors, creating a community consisting of the artist and the viewer, whose
behavior and interaction serves to interpret and reveal social structures in an urban environment.
Their activity not only addresses the relationship of art to the reality of life, but also always the
relationship of the artist to the audience. Both of them are not only artists but work as curators
and organizers, and thus unite the productive and receptive sides of the art business in their own
life history.

In 1999 Yuriy Kruchak and Iuliia Kosterieva organized the artistic platform Open Place. It is
directed to extension of creative research and to establishment of the links between art process
and the different layers of modern society. Art is understood as a space of intersections of artistic
social and political processes. The platform seeks to provide both the artist and the viewer with a
specific form of equality and liberation. Open Place strive to extend the borders of influence of
art, and to engage the new groups of people to creative process, through the interdisciplinary
projects, as well as to establish a fruitful dialogue between society and those who creates art.

YURIY KRUCHAK studied Scenography at Kharkiv State School of Art and Design of
environment at the Kharkiv state academy of design and art from where he graduated in 1996.
He did postgraduate course in Painting at the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture,
Kyiv, Ukraine (1996-1999).

IULIIA KOSTERIEVA studied Scenography at Kharkiv State School of Art and Graphic Art at
the Kharkiv state academy of design and art from where she graduated in 1998. She did
postgraduate program in Graphic Art at the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture,
Kyiv, Ukraine (1998-2001).