Tatiana Pick's Psychedelic Hallway

As the elevator door opens onto the 13th-floor hallway of this otherwise unassuming Soviet-era apartment building in Kyiv’s outskirts, you step out of reality and enter the bizarre and disturbing world of the artist’s psychedelic nightmares.

Every surface of the 13th-floor hallway at 26 Radunska Street has been transformed by former resident Tatiana Pick, into a hallway to hell. Presumed to be one of the residents of the floor, the artist spent five years turning the walls, roof, and even the floor and garbage chute into the canvas for her very own psychedelic vision. Not everyone in the building was even on board with the transformation, but Pick didn’t ask for permission to begin with.  

The walls and roof of the hallway are covered in multi-colored bulbous skin that seems to have absorbed countless animal figurines, toys, plants, mirrors, glass orbs, undefinable textures, and obscure religious iconography. Despite the peculiarity of the objects embedded in the walls, nothing seems out of place in the hallway, because nothing seems in place to begin with.

Only the doors of some apartments on the floor have been left untouched by the artist, but not all. Lost in the fantasy, it’s easy to forget you’re standing in a functioning apartment hallway, with people living regular lives in regular apartments, right on the other side of this mysterious and disturbing dream world.

Update: Due to refurbishment of the building the hallway has been completely replastered and very little of the art remains.