Photo © Andrei Stseburaka, courtesy of the YermilovCentre 
Photo © Oleksandr Osipov, courtesy of the YermilovCentre 
Photo © Oleksandr Osipov, courtesy of the YermilovCentre
Untitled. From the series "Yesterday's Sandwich" ("Overlay")
Digital printing | The work was created on request of the State Art Collections of Dresden for the "Kaleidoscope of Stories" exhibition. Ukrainian Art 1912-2023 / 1960 / 1979
Courtesy of
This photograph belongs to Boris Mikhailov's famous experimental series of works, Overlays, which the artist began working on in the mid-1960s. The original print of this particular photograph is signed in pencil: Kharkiv, 1968.
The principle of the experiment itself was to superimpose two frames of film with different images on top of each other, resulting in a new artistic motif. Combining the ideological language of one frame with the second frame's private, human, subjective message created a third, partly unpredictable image that opened up the possibility of making an artistic and social statement. Initially, Mikhailov demonstrated this series in the form of slides with musical accompaniment, in particular, Pink Floyd. Later, he began to separate specific fragments of the series into independent monumental works, in which surrealistic images from the past appear as terrible prophecies of the future, witnessing the present tragic events.