The exhibition was created during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The team of Noch gallery had to interrupt its regular monthly exhibition schedule. Then we decided to make an exhibition based on the virtual space of an antique sale web platform. With this exhibition, we managed to activate the social fantasy of the audience and started looking for new ways of representation for artists. Additionally, we wanted to infiltrate the basic matrix of the internet platform. Back then, we were unable to meet and study art and talk about it due to legal restrictions. Searching for a new landscape for expression, we came to digital reality. But we didn’t want to simulate reality. Instead, we intended to create a new dimension for exhibition and communication. So, it was a classic case of appropriating the territory, that was unintended for artistic purposes. The distinction between similar artistic actions of modernity and of the past lies in that the action takes place not in a public space of Euclidean reality, but on a virtual landscape. Having introduced contemporary art into a context initially not suited to include that, not only did we trial the limits of the high vs. profane (since culture mostly keeps coding art as intended to exist on the ‘higher planes’), but also followed the tradition of takeover actionism.

Noch offered artists to participate in a virtual exhibition in the digital space. OLX trading portal was chosen for that purpose. This platform features such interaction options as sell, exchange, or giving free. In each case, the artist chose among the options himself.

Artists: Nikolay Karabinovych, Mitya Churikov, Maria Silchenko, Lisovenko Ekaterina, Daniil Galkin, Vladimir Chigrinets, Anton Tkachenko, Anita Nemet and Olan Nemet,Alina Sokolova, Alexey Salmanov, Alexandra Kadzevich, Tutaj Tymczasowsky