Sergiy Bratkov: My Brother’s Cats

Sergiy Bratkov is renowned for his radically provocative and piercing photographs, which offer an unflinching critique of society beneath its beautiful, colourful veneer. The photographer, who comes from the Ukrainian industrial city of Kharkiv, began his artistic journey in the early 1980s. His oeuvre spans various artistic genres, particularly photography and painting, and includes photo collages and hand-colouring. A pivotal member of the “Kharkiv School of Photography” and the Gosprom group, Bratkov’s generation sought to challenge Soviet traditions and pervasive propaganda, which were characterised by the doctrines and methodologies of socialist realism. They pioneered a novel approach to documentary photography, and for the subsequent three decades, social photography became Bratkov’s central focus.

In the spring of 2022, Bratkov, who had resided in Moscow since 2001, emigrated to Berlin. His recent works, which scrutinise the obsolete clichés of the Soviet era and the emergent ethos of power-driven Eastern capitalism in Ukraine, have been starkly overshadowed by current events.

In the exhibition My Brother’s Cats, Sergiy Bratkov unveils new series of images and videos, created since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He continues to employ the technique of overpainting, which he has utilised in previous series, to transform photographs into abstractions. The ironically observant photographer has evolved into a probing analyst. His direct, sometimes unyielding portrayal of everyday life endures in his photographs and paintings. These series are not merely reflections on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine but also attempts to transmute the human experience, processing the horrors of war in his former homeland without succumbing to despair.

Sergiy Bratkov was born in 1960 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and belonged to the “Kharkiv School of Photography.” In 1994, he was a founding member of the group “Rapid Reaction.” In 2010 he received the first prize of the 5th All-Russian Annual Award in the field of contemporary visual art “Innovation”. He lived and worked in Moscow from 2001 to 2022, now in Berlin. Bratkov’s works are shown in solo and group exhibitions.