ruins and reproductions - Serhiy Savchenko

“War destroys and wipes out individuality. Savchenko’s paintings show recognizable urban landscapes transformed into the monotony of ruins, where individual character disappears. It is a disturbing metaphor for something deeply present in today’s world: the destruction and equalization of identity itself.”
From a conversation with the artist Olena Turyanska

“Every government or country writes a story in its own way, so the story should not be understood but felt.”
Anselm Kiefer

“This project speaks about human folly and forgetfulness…”
Vlodko Kaufman, Ukrainian artist

Ruins and Reproductions is an ongoing series of large-scale paintings initiated by Serhiy Savchenko in 2018. Based on historical and contemporary photographs of cities destroyed by war, the project creates a visual timeline stretching from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day.
Dresden, Coventry, Warsaw, Gdańsk, Hiroshima, Leuven, Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv and other cities appear within the same visual narrative. Different countries, different generations, different wars — yet the landscape left behind is disturbingly similar.
The project speaks about human folly, forgetfulness and our persistent inability to learn from history. War destroys more than buildings and infrastructure. It erases the individuality of places, fragments cultural memory and attempts to remove the traces of human presence. A city that once possessed its own architecture, rhythm and identity is transformed into an almost universal landscape of ruins.
The paintings are created in an expressive, gestural technique combining oil and acrylic — materials that resist one another, react and crack. Their unstable surfaces become a physical extension of the subject itself: rupture, fragmentation and destruction.

The principal works in the series are large-scale diptychs, approximately 180 × 240 cm, consisting of two independent panels.
Their structure is fundamental to the concept of the project. The halves of different diptychs can be separated and recombined. Dresden can continue into Mariupol, Warsaw into Kharkiv, Gdańsk into Kyiv. Works originating from different historical periods and geographical locations become parts of a single composition.
One of the possible exhibition formats is a long monumental frieze assembled from mixed halves of different diptychs. In this configuration, individual histories dissolve into one continuous, timeless landscape of destruction.
The geography changes.
The dates change.
The names of the wars change.
The ruin remains frighteningly similar.

At the same time, Ruins and Reproductions is about catastrophe, memory and the capacity for reconstruction.
The ruin becomes a carrier of memory — evidence of what has been destroyed and of what cannot be completely erased. The project reflects on the ability of societies to preserve their identity, rebuild themselves and continue to exist after physical and cultural destruction.
Today, the experience of Ukraine occupies a central place within this narrative. Images of Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kyiv enter into a visual dialogue with Dresden, Coventry, Warsaw, Hiroshima or Leuven. Contemporary Ukrainian tragedy therefore becomes connected to the historical memory of other nations.
This connection is essential to the project. It asks the viewer to recognize the present through the experience of the past — and to consider why humanity continues to reproduce the same landscapes of destruction.

Ruins and Reproductions was first presented in Gdańsk in 2019 and later exhibited at Dzyga Gallery in Lviv in 2024.
The series remains open and continues to expand. New works are created from historical and contemporary photographic material, allowing the project to respond to new places, contexts and events.
For future international presentations, Savchenko can create new diptychs connected to the historical memory of the city or country in which the exhibition takes place. In this way, each presentation becomes a new dialogue between Ukraine’s present experience and the memory of another society.
Ruins and Reproductions is ultimately a visual testimony to the repetition of destruction across time — and a question addressed to our collective memory: how many times must we see the same ruin before we finally remember?

Serhiy Savchenko, resistance against death. Olena Grubb, MAAB Sotheby’s Institute of Art