L’Atlas invites Ukrainian gallery The Naked Room to present a double programme, spread over the two floors of the gallery: a solo exhibition of Pavlo Makov’s recent series Abracadabra and an exhibition entitled It’s Only Achille’s Heel That’s Left Alive, which brings together the work of five young female Ukrainian artists: Katya Buchatska, Lucy Ivanova, Katya Libkind,
Kateryna Lysovenko and Olga Sabko.

After curating the Ukrainian Pavilion with Fountain of Exhaution. Acqua Alta by Pavlo Makov at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022, The Naked Room presents the artist’s first solo exhibition in Paris at L’Atlas. His series Abracadabra is a book in the making where black and white engravings serve as text and coloured drawings as inserts. By reversing the scale of urban labyrinths and cultivated plants, the artist invites us to reflect on the current state of societies governed by technology and proposes a subversive point of view to the anthropocentric one in which plants are fragile and small compared to stable, immutable and immense human constructions.

In parallel, the group exhibition It’s Only Achilles’ Heel That’s Left Alive – a reference to the legendary Greek warrior whose heel was the only point of vulnerability – combines the work of five young Ukrainian artists ranging from painting and drawing to sculpture and video. Katya Libkind’s vulnerability and bodily taboos; the uncertainty, fragility and ephemerality of Olga Sabko’s sculptures; Katya Buchatska’s deconstructed perspectives and shifted perceptions; Lucy Ivanova’s powerful narration of intimate experiences; and Kateryna Lysovenko’s empathetic
portrayal of contemporary destinies: The exhibition invites us to discover a generation of artists, a generation of women born in Ukraine in the late 1980s and early 1990s, who through a scrupulous examination of the world around them sometimes reflect its poetry, sometimes its violence.

The Naked Room is a contemporary art gallery based in Kyiv. Their work is driven by rigorous curatorial programming and the aspiration for a legitimate art market for Ukrainian artists. Founded in 2018 in Kyiv by independent curators Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko and a Swiss filmmaker Marc Wilkins, it is dedicated to establishing a reasoned market presence for young Ukrainian artists.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the gallery continues to support the work of its artists, with various international exhibitions.