Small series
2019-2022
Noah, 2021
(parquet (USSR), animal toys, acrylic, glass, varnish)
The artist uses parquet salvaged from a dump and plastic animal figurines — dinosaurs, sea lions, lions, and domestic cats. These elements are assembled into compositions where the animals stand on pieces of parquet, resembling rafts or the decks of a ruined ship. Once part of a floor, the parquet here becomes a symbol of the civilizational layer that covers the earth for the sake of comfort and coziness. Cast aside as waste, this material testifies to the fragility and transience of humanity’s cultural legacy.
The title “Noah” refers to the ancient myth of the Great Flood and the Ark that gathered representatives of all species. Yet in this contemporary version of the Ark we witness a strange coexistence of animals separated by entire geological epochs: cats appear alongside a Triceratops, and sea lions alongside a Stegosaurus. This temporal incommensurability disrupts the familiar linearity of historical time. The result is the image of a timeless space, where past, present, and hypothetical future coexist simultaneously, as fragments of a single post-apocalyptic myth.
('Antiantrop', 2021-2025)
Pozem, 2022
(fragments of the framework of a ruined wooden house, 19th-century Orthodox icon crowns, acrylic, polyester primer)
The series of objects “Pozem” was born out of the experience of losing stability — after the war began, the ground literally and metaphorically disappeared from underfoot. Old words ceased to work, and new ones had not yet taken shape. In this pause, on the threshold between loss and search, the artist turns to simple and clear images, unburdened by heavy concepts yet filled with inner gravity.
The title of the series refers to the Old Russian word “pozem” — in icon painting it designated the soil, the ground upon which the action unfolds. Formally, the objects echo iconographic depictions of mountains, deserts, and tectonic rifts — symbolic landscapes in which the material is intertwined with the sacred.
To create them, the artist uses fragments of old logs from the installation “Homin” and pieces of 19th-century icon crowns.
“Pozem” is not a reconstruction of what has been lost, but a gaze into the cracks and ruptures of reality, where tradition and catastrophe merge into one. It is an attempt to grope for a language capable of expressing collapse while at the same time holding onto a connection with the earth, with memory, and with spiritual experience.
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