I Could Live In Hope

2024
Exhibition at Eugster || Belgrade, instalation view


At first glance Tkačenko’s show is spare. Including the plasterboard, there are only four works in the whole gallery, located in a metal hangar on Belgrade’s industrial outskirts. The word ‘LOW’ appears large on the far wall opposite the entrance, each letter perhaps three metres tall. The O is italicised and bright, a luminous sunset-red neon. The light shimmers in the reflection of the gallery’s metal doors, the gallery silent save for the neon, fizzing quietly like feedback from a guitar amp. The L and W appear darkened, as if suffering from an outage; look closer and they are in fact painted onto the white wall, dark blue stencils, with chips and flecks of paint left from the tape’s peeling-off. Opposite, a plastic foldout table stands at an angle from the wall; the track list of Low’s album is scratched in capitals into the dirty surface. It takes a certain angle of the light to spot it. Duct-taped to the wall behind it is a white T-shirt with the album’s title printed in red, like the last stock remaining from a long-abandoned concert merch stand. Physically, that’s all there is.


Excerpt from the text Saša Tkachenko's Letter to Low by Alexander Leissle, ArtReview 2024
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Photo: © Ivan Zupanc