Sergiy Petlyuk employs various artistic media but mainly the moving image in conjunction with sculptural installations to create immersive spaces where the key element is often the viewer herself.  Videos, projections, sound, and kinetic elements, in combination with carefully conceived architectural structures, are to yield highly charged total environments engaging and operating upon the beholder’s body, senses, and mind. Through these settings, where the participation designed as a strange, even alienating encounter, the artist explores issues of control, aggression, violence, otherness, and fear stemmed from the constant tension between self and society in the context of post-soviet Ukraine, with its social norms, stereotypes, nationalism, political upheavals, and continuous search for cultural identity. The goal is to communicate overly familiar but often inconspicuous and repressed feelings and memories, making them visible and inescapable for the viewer in the unusual artistic settings.  As the artist addresses the most fragile and vulnerable layers of individual and social consciousness, the naked human body often becomes his primary material, with its natural tenderness contrasted to the cold social rationality. In other words, Petlyuk’s work is a multilayered and continuous investigation of the contact between body sensitivity and various flows of life, such as imagination, memory, information, mediatization, social order, and cohabitation.

 1981 y.b., media artist, lives and works in Lviv (UA) and Paris (FR)

Solo Exhibitions 
2021 Shards of Reality, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (FR)
2021  ̶I̶N̶D̶E̶X̶. Voloshyn Gallery, Kyiv (UA)
        Debris, Artsvit Gallery, Dnipro (UA)
2018 The Hymn. Rum46, Aarhus (DN)
2016 Elementary Manipulation. Kharkiv City Art Gallery, Kharkiv (UA)
2015 Limit of Comprehension. Dzyga Gallery, Lviv (UA)
        Limit of Comprehension. Small Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
        Untitled, Chapel Gallery. Centre of Polish Sculpture, Orońsko (PL)
2014 Stand by. Dzyga Gallery, Lviv, (UA)
2013 Live Landscape. Kordegarda Gallery, Warsaw (PL) (catalogue)
2012 Empty City. Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH (USA)
2010 Breathing. Palace of Art, Lviv (UA)
2011 Watershed. BWA Gallery, Leszno (PL)
2009 Dreams about Europe. ON Gallery, Poznań (PL)
2008 Exchange. Dzyga Gallery, Lviv (UA)

Projects in Public Space (selected)

2024 In Search of the Lost Home, Nirox Sculpture Park, Johannesburg (ZA)
2023 Nuit Blanche, arts festival, Paris (FR)
2018 Untitled. Ivano-Frankivsk Old Town (UA)
2017 Scanning Uncertain Space. Aldona, GOA (IND)
2012 Empty City. Dayton Downtown, OH (USA)
        Exchange. Lublin Old Town (PL)
2008 Sale. Lviv Old Town (UA)

Group Exhibitions & Projects (selected)

2024
Testimony. Boris Lurie & Contemporary Art from Eastern Europe, Neues Museum Nürnberg (DE)
CRUSH, l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (FR)

2023 
Our Years, Our Words, Our Losses, Our Searches, Our Us, Jam Factory Art Center, Lviv (UA)
Coexisting with Darkness, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
Human, Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, Słupsk (PL)
When the Inconceivable Takes Form, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (FR)
How Did I Get to the Bomb Shelter, Nordic House, Reykjavik (IS); Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center, Daugavpils (LV); Ukraine House in Denmark, Copenhagen (DN)

2022
Ukrainian Section. Trienniale of Contemporary Ukrainian Art, Kaunas (LT) (catalogue)
Conversations - a great journey across many borders, languages and cultures, Stary Browar, Słodownia, Poznań (PL)
2021
Tetramatyka. Festival of Audiovisual Art, Lviv (UA) (catalogue)
2020
Touchable distance. Ў Gallery of Contemporary Art, Minsk (BY)
2019
Happiness is Born in the Guts. The Arsenal Municipal Gallery, Poznan (PL)
Reforming the Space. Centre for Contemporary Art M17, Kyiv (UA)
2018
Permanent Revolution. Ukrainian Art Today. Ludwig Museum, Budapest (HUN) (catalogue)
Instant Time. Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
Porto Franko Festival. Ivano-Frankivsk (UA)
2017
Peculiarities and Utopias. Centre for the Meeting of Cultures, Lublin (PL) 
Ostrale Biennale. Dresden (GER) (catalogue)
Exhibition of Achievements of Ukrainian Media Art. Centre for Creative Industries “Fabrika”, Moscow (RU)
Silent City. Ў Gallery of Contemporary Art, Minsk (BY)
2016 
Kunst-und Film Biennale. Worpswede (GER)
Event Horizon. Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (UA) 
Ukrainian Section. Trienniale of Contemporary Ukrainian Art, Wrocław (PL) (catalogue)
What is your name? Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
Elementary Manipulation. Gdańsk Shakespeare Theater, Gdansk, (PL)
Mediations Biennale. Poznań (PL) (catalogue)
2015 
UK/raine: emerging artists from the UK and Ukraine. Saatchi Gallery, London (GB) (catalogue)
PinchukArtCentre Prize 2015. Short-list exhibition, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, (UA)
10th Art Kyiv Contemporary. Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (UA)
2014 
Light. Glasshuset, Umea (SE)
Premonition: Ukrainian Art Now. Saatchi Gallery, London (GB) (catalogue)
Construction. Festival of New Media and Audiovisual art in Urban Space, Dnipro (UA) 
On the Silver Globe. KunstHal Aarhus, Aarhus (DN)
2013 
15th Media Art Biennale WRO “Pioneering Values”. Wrocław, (PL) (catalogue)
Ukrainian Section. Triennale of Contemporary Ukrainian Art, Lublin (PL) (catalogue)
Tetramatyka. Festival of Audiovisual Art, Lviv (UA) (catalogue)
2012
First Kyiv Biennale of Contemporary Art. Special Project. Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (UA) (catalogue)
Contemporary Art Week. Lviv (UA) (catalogue)
2011
13th Media Art Biennale WRO “Alternative now”. Wrocław, (PL) (catalogue)
PinchukArtCentre Prize 2011. Short-list exhibition, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, (UA)
2009
Archaeology of reality. BWA Gallery, Zielona Góra (PL)
Transformator. Festival of New Media Arts, Lviv (UA)
2008
Non-stop Media. Festival of Youth Projects, Kharkiv (UA)
Contemporary Art Week. Lviv (UA) (catalogue)

Scholarships & Residency programs

2024 Nirox Sculpture Park residency program, Johannesburg (ZA)
2024 NORA Artist-in-residency Program, Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans (FR)
2023 Stipend of Academie de Beaux-Arts, Paris (FR)
2022 Stipend of Emergency Art Fund, Kyiv (UA)
2021 Artsvit Residency program, Artsvit Gallery, Dnipro (UA)
2020 Magic Carpets project Residency, Jam Factory Art Centre, Lviv (UA
2018 Room for improved futures, Rum46, Aarhus (DN) 
2017 14th Khoj International Workshop, Aldona, Goa, (IND) (catalogue)
2015 A-i-R WRO, Residency by European Capital of Culture, Wroclaw (PL)
        A-i-R, Centre of Polish Sculpture, Oronsko (PL)
2012 CEC Artslink residency, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH (USA)
2011 Gaude Polonia, scholarship by Polish Ministry of Culture, Wroclaw  (PL)
2009 Gaude Polonia, scholarship by Polish Minister of Culture, Poznan (PL)

Prizes
2015 UK/raine: Emerging Artists from the UK and Ukraine, Saatchi Gallery, London (GB) – overall winner & winner in the new media category

University Education
2024 M.A. l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (FR), diploma with honours
2005 M.F.A. Degree, Lviv National Academy of Art, Lviv (UA)
2003 B.F.A. Degree, Lviv National Academy of Art, Lviv (UA)