“Ukrainians stop buying art in the first place in crisis and renew buying the last after the crisis,” Serhii Tumasov, artist, founder of the Tumasoff Landscape Art Photography and MIM-Kyiv MBA comments on the domestic art scene at MIM-TV interview.

Large offices that mostly commissioned large art are rethinking the idea of office work. So do many artists who are suffering from the patrons’ lost appetite for art. “We are switching to smaller size art and new concepts. Tokenization or making art virtual is one of the latest contemporary art trends. It is known for putting the process of art creation into the focus. Thus, transforming real-life art objects into virtual ones and destroying the real-life original is one of the newest art forms. We had digitalized and destroyed the work by a well-known Ukrainian artist and then sold it at the international auction,” Serhii shared his latest experiences. Ha also said that the art market is was coming back to life although he could not travel yet for the new images.

Art shows are also changing to keep up with the situation. As a founder of the Kyiv Photo Week, annual international photography show in Kyiv, Serhii blended offline and online at the Kyiv Photo Week 2020. “We did a real-life exhibition but could not have visitors. So we did a 3D tour. Any site visitor could have had a tour of the exhibition at our site,” he told about his latest event.

Serhii says that he is an old-fashion guy. “I believe in face-to-face communication and presence. I do my best to talk to people in person because, in my experience, a shared coffee is more efficient in solving problems than ZOOM meetings. I believe in physical objects. If you can hold the album of my photos in your hand, you hold value. It is like sharing energy. That’s why we are doing smaller size albums and give them to people. Art is about creating and sharing. Sharing stories behind the works and sharing the energies makes the physicality of artworks so important,” Serhii explained.