Sodobna umetnost (Aljoša Abrahamsberg), 12. oktober 2016 ― Above the pedestal the air condenses in a dark cloud. At times the shared experience of post-communism seems a common denominator of the ex-socialist countries to a much higher degree than communism ever was. While the real socialism allowed for significant variations in its systemic articulation, ranging from a corporativist Yugoslav model to a more dogmatic Soviet version, post-communism more often than not offers a monolithic iteration of the assumption of post-history. It is seen as a return to the »natural« development that was forcefully halted by communism which in post-communism narrative is always seen as foreign to the »national character«, which we are fortunate enough to regain. On the other hand, the experience of communism is, as Boris Buden puts it, inaccessible in its political significance, barred by its reduction to a cultural phenomenon. It thus becomes elusive and falls prey to a vast array of simplifications, ranging from demonization to naive nostalgia. In his practice Nikita Kadan addresses these very issues. In the exhibition entitled Above the pedestal the air condenses in a dark cloud, he tackles the paradoxical status of the Soviet experience and the way it is manipulated in the process of legitimizing the new economic and political paradigm. Kadan renounces the symptomatically post-communist strategy of culturalizing the reading of the past: his project takes an explicitly political focus in both deidealizing the Soviet project but simultaneously offering a relentless critique of post-Soviet forms of anticommunism. This is apparent in the most paradigmatic work in the show, Watchtower, a large scale sculpture the viewer encounters immediately after entering the gallery. It is an eclectic combination of a quotation from high modernist architectural idiom (the roof), open skeleton structure of its middle part and the garden as its base. The abstract form of the roof doubtlessly acts as an element of the superstructure, much in the way unive