In April 2011 the Art Arsenal announces the beginning of the International Week of Contemporary Art with a scale project "Space Odyssey 2011". The project includes not only the exhibition of contemporary Ukrainian and foreign artists, but also an exposition of space artifacts, a film program, and numerous educational events and forums.

The "Space Odyssey 2011" summarizes the efforts of a man as creator to understand his place in the universe, get the Creation chaos organized, and broaden his outlook boundaries by looking into the future. It is in opposition to the equally eternal chaos category, that the project aims to focus on a man’s efforts to logically organize the human reality by artistic means, in other words to mythologize and aesthetically idealize his existence. The idea of the project resonates with Aristotle's maxim: space as "the greatest work of art". The project appeals not only to the Man within the Universe, but also to the inward man, which resembles "microcosm". Space as a myth, universe, dream, journey, anticipation, another reality: the theme of the project suggests the participants the widest range of opportunities for their own interpretations and also deals with a range from cosmogony to futurism.

Among the incentives of the project is also the problem of relationship between art, philosophy and science, including "space" as a metaphor for a scientific model. James Joyce was most precise on the man’s space perception: "It’s a chaosmos, a mixture of an irrational feeling and order, which are dictated by the knowledge". Therefore, the project combines the artistic component with scientific documents and amazing artifacts from profile museums, which, in the course of becoming a part of the context of the new museum complex “Arsenal”, will be subject of a creative excursion into the history of human’s comprehension of the cosmos.

The project consists of works that had been created by modern Ukrainian and foreign artists during the last quarter of the century, and also presents new works of artists that were specifically created for the "Space Odyssey 2011". In addition to paintings and photos the project will be concerned with new media, which the development of modern art is impossible without. A variety of video and laser projections, kinetic sculpture, etc. will be presented, emphasizing that the connection between artists and technology is an integral part of modern day.

The exhibition will outline selected works of Ukrainian artists: Arsen Savadov, Igor Gusev, Stanislav Voliazlovski, Sergei Anufriev, Vasyl Tsagolov, Alexander Gnilitskiy, Sergey Popov, Nikita Kadan, Mazoch Fund (Ihor Podolchak, Ihor Durich), Oleksiy Say, Anatoly Sloiko, Kirill Protsenko, Illia Chichkan etc.

The artists we are inviting are: Oleg Kulik, Vladimir Dubossarsky & Alexander Vinogradov (Russia), Pawel Althamer (Poland), Boris Achour (France), Rochus Aust (Germany), Eva Schlegel (Austria), group of Korean and Taiwanese artist etc.

Project curator: Alexander Soloviov.