— Sergey Bratkov

"Viva today’s bad, for tomorrow will be good"

Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, and PinchukArtCentre

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

Fotomuseum Winterthur, Deichtorhallen – Haus der Photographie

M HKA — Museum of Contemporary Art

Born in 1960 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sergey Bratkov lives in Berlin. He is recognized as one of the key figures of Eastern European contemporary art. His work has been widely exhibited in international institutions, museums, and galleries, and is held in major public and private collections.

Since the late 1990s, his work has been consistently presented within an international institutional context, including participation in the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennial, and Manifesta, as well as exhibitions at institutions such as:

SMAK — Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst

Bratkov’s works shift the narrative, destabilizing the scene. Familiar roles and boundaries cease to function.

Figures and situations remain recognizable, yet distance collapses: the gaze becomes too close, the gesture excessive, presence unstable. This displacement produces a sense of artificiality within the real, where the possibility of a safe position disappears.

Centre Pompidou

Moderna Museet

Sergey Bratkov (b. 1960, Kharkiv, Ukraine) is a contemporary artist working across photography, video, painting, sculpture, and performance.

In his work, the private is inseparably interwoven with the collective, while forms range from portrait and panoramic compositions to staged scenes at the threshold of the documentary and the constructed. His direct, often confrontational visual language exposes the fragile conditions, a world of lost innocence, that shape behavior within social systems. His gaze sets a direction for perception, orienting perception from within the image.

"Iron Drive" is a gesture pushed to its limit, where the cost of a chosen position becomes visible.

"Iron Drive" is a live performance and installation by Sergey Bratkov. Through a simple yet irreversible gesture, the work explores fragility, transformation, and the human condition of moving forward without return.

The installation remains active between performances, preserving the atmosphere of heat, repetition, and suspended action.

The works metaphorically touch the surface of the collective body, unsettling its apparent stability.

Part of Bratkov’s iconic Kids series, Polina evokes a sense of discomfort: the child loses innocence, shifting from object to subject, capable of critically reflecting on their own world.

From the series Kids, 2000 / C-print, 40×27 cm, Edition: 2/10

The NFT version translating Bratkov’s visual language into new systems of circulation, ownership, and perception.

Bratkov’s Sex Shop. Rabbit A collage where desire and commodification are shaped through sexual clichés and visual codes inherited from the post-Soviet reality.

From the series Kiss my Guglе, 2016 / Photography, collage 60×90 cm

Exhibitions come together as a puzzle of time, shaping a narrative that captures social triggers.

Kollektsia!, Centre Pompidou, Paris

La collection XXXIII – La collection en tant que caractère, M HKA, Antwerp

The World Belongs to You, Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grassi, Venice

Venice Biennale, Ukrainian Pavilion, Venice

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Manifesta 5, San Sebastián

Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Iconografias Metropolitanas, 25th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo

Kaleidoscope of (Hi)stories. Ukrainian Art 1912–2023, Albertinum, Dresden

Horror Patriae, steirischer herbst, Graz

Vertical Horizon, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz

Iron Drive, CityX Foundation (during the Venice Biennale), Venice

Ukraine, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv

Balaklava Drive, Leo Koenig Inc., New York

Glory Days, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur

Sergey Bratkov, S.M.A.K., Ghent

Heldenzeiten, Deichtorhallen / Haus der Photographie, Hamburg

Kharkova/Moskova, Kunsthalle Kohta, Helsinki

My Brother’s Cats, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Magdeburg

Sergey Bratkov’s work is featured in international publications and catalogues exploring post-Soviet realities, identity, and social transformation.

Glory Days / Heldenzeiten: Works 1995–2007, Fotomuseum Winterthur (exhibition catalogue)

Balaklava Drive, Leo Koenig Inc., New York

Sergey Bratkov, Europalia, Ghent, (exhibition catalogue)

Ukraine, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv

We Are Not Here, Ovcharenko

My Brother’s Cats, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (exhibition catalogue)