2001. Video 3'50’’ Installation view: exhibition "Ukraine", Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev, 2010

How long is now  is a series created by Sergey Bratkov in 2022–2023, following the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine and the artist’s forced relocation to Berlin. The works are based on photographs of everyday urban environments, over which Bratkov applies acrylic paint by hand, partially obscuring and damaging images of buildings, streets, and courtyards. Through this physical intervention, the experience of war is displaced into the context of a European city, addre

The series focuses on the figure of a woman within the context of war — not as a heroic image, but as its most vulnerable and exposed subject. Executed entirely in a black-and-white palette, the works employ a restrained chromatic range that functions as a filter of grief and mourning, stripping the images of narrative certainty and emotional comfort. Through painterly intervention, Bratkov partially obscures and transforms the photographic surface, disrupting visibility and

A long-term conceptual work developed between 1995 and 2022, structured as a visual and temporal self-record. Combining photographic images with illuminated text panels, the installation traces a personal history through quantified gestures, dates, and declarations related to smoking and attempts to quit. The work operates through seriality and repetition. Photographic images—fragmentary, bodily, and performative—are juxtaposed with light boxes displaying concise textual stat

The video was filmed in the courtyard of the artist’s brother’s home during the war. It juxtaposes two visual registers: fragments of sky pierced by rocket fire and an apparently ordinary domestic scene where cats wander through a familiar yard. This everyday space carries the physical trace of violence — the scar left by a bomb that struck the courtyard. The animals, adorned with improvised festive decorations, introduce a naïve and almost absurd note that coexists with the

An object made from standard plastic road barriers suspended by two cables. Removed from their functional role of regulating movement and maintaining public order, the barriers are transformed into a suspended, non-operational structure. Shown within the context of the Kyiv Biennial, the work exposes the fragility and arbitrariness of imposed order, especially in conditions of war, where instruments of control remain visible even after losing their practical meaning. The obje

The photographs presented here were shown in a group exhibition Exile  at a municipal gallery in Berlin. Everyday objects, architectural interiors, and isolated figures are rendered with a heightened sense of tension, oscillating between documentary observation and symbolic resonance. Shown together within the context of Exile , these photographs articulate exile not only as a geographic condition, but as an existential state marked by instability, estrangement, and the erosi

This body of paintings continues what can be described as the Bratkov effect - a mode of artistic impact in which the image ceases to function as representation and instead becomes a field of direct pressure. Words, short phrases, and fragmented statements appear as visual strikes: isolated, abrupt, stripped of explanatory context. In these works, text registers a condition - fractured, tense, and deprived of causal logic. The large scale, sharp chromatic contrasts, and radic

At its core is a suitcase tightly wrapped in transparent stretch film — the material commonly used to seal luggage during travel. The wrapping recalls a shed skin, like that of a snake: a layer once necessary for protection, now discarded. The work speaks about transformation through displacement. Migration here is not represented as movement forward, but as a process of shedding — leaving behind former layers of identity, habits, and attachments. The wrapped suitcase becomes

metal, plastik, (188 ×46 ×200 cm)

Peinture for the open-air exhibition Punk Palast in Charlottenburg, Berlin, organized by Dr. Schreyger’s Kunstpalast . The project transformed building facades into a temporary stage for unfiltered statements. 9 works (different dimension)