The “Irena” gallery opened on May 15, 1991. The gallery was founded with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation to develop and promote Ukrainian art. It is one of the first non-governmental contemporary art galleries in Kyiv and in Ukraine in general. Its permanent owner, director, and curator was Iryna Osadcha, known as Irena — the gallery was named in her honor. The exhibition space was 40 square meters, located at 35 Artema St. (now Sichovykh Striltsiv St.). The gallery closed in October 2010.
“Irena” appeared during the wave of the gallery movement in the early 1990s, when after the collapse of the Soviet Union, total commercialization began and the art market gradually formed. At that time, the status of “gallery” did not exist in the country, and galleries could not operate under the rules of a commercial structure due to the absence of an art market, so they were usually registered as non-profit organizations conducting exhibition activities or small enterprises. The “Irena” gallery was no exception. Having received a small space from the Shevchenkivskyi district administration at a preferential price, Irena Osadcha began active exhibition activities, focusing on emerging artists.
Iryna Osadcha entered the gallery sphere by chance. A philologist by education, she worked for some time as a proofreader at the magazine “Vsesvit,” where she met Valeriy Gruzin, deputy editor of “Vsesvit” and simultaneously executive director of the International Renaissance Foundation. It was Gruzin who suggested Osadcha hold an exhibition in the new office of the Foundation at 46 Artema St. The first exhibition in Iryna’s professional life as a gallerist was that of Petro Lebedynets. Later, with the support of the same Renaissance Foundation, a small enterprise “Irena” was created, located nearby at 35 Artema St.[1].
Osadcha recounts that at the beginning of her activity she lacked experience and appropriate knowledge, so she always consulted experts, mainly art historians. These included Iryna Saienko and [?] Balabina, who specialized in decorative and applied arts, and later a successful tandem was formed with Oleksiy Tytarenko, an art historian who lived for some time with artists in a squat on Velyka Zhytomyrska St. and followed trends from the inside.
Among the first notable projects through which the gallery made its name was “Enlightenment,” aimed at protecting the rights of creative people in places of imprisonment. In 1993, Iryna Osadcha appealed to the Main Directorate for the Execution of Punishments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine with a proposal to give prisoners in jails and colonies a chance to realize themselves through art[2]. The three-year project was supported by the International Renaissance Foundation. A competition was announced, resulting in several exhibitions. Within the project, Iryna Osadcha and government officials were invited to Nuremberg to familiarize themselves with the local prison system. The project, aimed at socializing prisoners through creative activity, had important social significance — drawing attention to the real state of affairs in the penitentiary system. Later it became part of the State Department of Ukraine’s program on the execution of punishments and continues to exist in this status.
In 1994, “Irena” held the International Stone Sculpture Symposium “Terra incognita.” Ten sculptors participated, receiving scholarships and working for a month at a sports base near Kyiv. Essentially, this was one of the first art residencies for sculptors.
In 1996, the “Irena” gallery acted as organizer and curator of the artistic-literary project “From Baroque to Baroque,” dedicated to the Baroque culture of the 17th–18th centuries and neo-Baroque trends in the 20th century. A two-day scientific conference and a group exhibition of Yuriy Lutskevych, Mykola Storozhenko, and Dmytro Yablonsky were held at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. “From Baroque to Baroque” was one of the first initiatives aimed at analyzing the significance of this phenomenon for Ukrainian culture and drawing attention to it.
In the 1990s, “Irena” implemented many projects with older generation artists — Viktor Ryzhykh, Halyna Neledva, Oleksandr Levyche, Yuriy Lutskevych, Oleksandr Storozhenko, Serhiy Zhivotkov, and others.
Since 1998, the gallery often cooperated with embassies, holding exhibitions of Ukrainian artists in their premises. Later, it organized three international symposiums: the Ukrainian-American symposium “Dawn of Friendship” (2001), co-organized by Gale and Paul Torney (USA), the Third Ukrainian-Polish symposium “Eco-objects” (2003), which took place in the Shatsky National Nature Park in Volyn.
Among other things, the “Irena” gallery turned to photography, founding the international photo biennale “Month of Photography.” In 2003, “Photo Biennale — 2003” took place: during April, 53 exhibitions were organized in 30 galleries and museums of Kyiv. Photography art was presented on such a scale in Ukraine perhaps for the first time. The gallery also hosted an exhibition of photographers Mykola Troha (Ukraine) and Marek Zulkowski (Poland).
In 2002, the project “Young Artists of Ukraine” was launched to support the young generation of artists. At “Irena,” a new blitz exhibition opened every two weeks. The gallery actively cooperated with the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, offering students premises and other opportunities. “Over the years, the gallery earned a reputation as a discoverer of new names”[3]. Artists such as Hanna Kryvolap, Ilona Silvashi, Mykhailo Khymych, and Andriy Sydorenko exhibited at “Irena.” After the first stage of the project, the catalog “Young Artists of Ukraine” was published.
In the history of the “Irena” gallery, it is difficult to single out landmark exhibitions and equally difficult to name artists with whom the gallery worked consistently, as is customary in the European art system. “Irena” was an important exhibition space in the 1990s — early 2000s, it gave a start to many young artists and supported those whose careers were not very successful. The active activity of “Irena,” focused more on constant searches and discovering new names than on an analytical consistent approach, is characteristic of the gallery movement of the 1990s, a time of rapid changes and opportunities.
In 2010, despite rental documents, the Shevchenkivskyi district administration, with the involvement of law enforcement, took the premises from the gallery. In October of that year, “Irena” ceased to exist[4]. In total, the “Irena” gallery operated for 19 years and organized more than 500 exhibitions, events, projects, and international symposiums in Ukraine and abroad during this time[5].