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Galleryst's Cabinet
January 24 - March 2, 2025
Andrey Syaylev, Alisa Gorelova, Anya Zholud, Oleg khvostov, Anton Konukhov, Adil Aubekerov, Anna Kazmina, Vladimir Tryamkin, Evgeny Chubarov, Vladislav Zubarev, Evgeny Mihnov-Voytenko
As Noël Arnaud once wrote "I am the space I am in." Applied to the context of the gallery business, collecting, and curating, this formula could sound like: "I am the art with which I have surrounded myself." The image of a "personal room" filled with artifacts — as the perfect space for the exhibition ideas to form — has united all the artists of the PA Gallery circle in this new project. Creators of the exposition continue to perceive it as an autonomous medium, based on the value identity of both the work itself and the framework for its display and perception that is set by the curator. The formative metaphor this time is the "cabinet of curiosities."
The cabinet of curiosities, wonders, or kunstkamera emerged in the 16th century when traditional treasuries ceased to be merely a means of storing wealth and transformed into a tool for shaping the image of the collector as an enlightened figure — a bearer of an individual yet encyclopedic vision of the world. In the largest cabinets, such as those of Ferdinand I in Vienna, Francesco I de' Medici in Florence, and Rudolf II in Prague, works of art were displayed alongside minerals, shells, weapons, coins and medals, taxidermy specimens, skeletons, vases, clocks, and astronomical instruments. Collectors aspired to create for themselves, as Francis Bacon said, "And so you have, in a small compass, a model of universal nature made private."
The emergence of these cabinets was influenced by the works of the alchemist and physician Paracelsus, who believed that man is a microcosm reflecting all the elements of the macrocosm. The owner of a Kunstkamera thus gained access to the universe in all its diversity. By the 18th century, collecting had come to be based on principles of natural-scientific classification, giving rise to the museum as an institutional form.
The image of a cabinet of curiosities has been revived in postmodern culture. The principle of "strange juxtapositions" declared by curator Jean-Hubert Martin replaces classifications and cause-and-effect relationships with a game of free associations and subjectivity of the view.
This approach to exhibition organization, first seen in Magiciens de la Terre ("Magicians of the Earth") at the Centre Pompidou in 1989 and Curios & Mirabilia at Château d'Oiron in 1993, remains relevant to this day. Galleries are increasingly turning to it.
The Gallerist’s Cabinet presents not only works by all the artists collaborating with PA Gallery but also the private collections of its owners. Brought together, these pieces begin to reflect one another. The skeletal metal structures of Anya Zhelud, which reduce everyday objects — an ironing board, a piano, a floor lamp — to the contours of their boundaries enclosing emptiness, enter into dialogue with the dancing, curved trajectories of Yevgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, formed by paint squeezed directly from tubes. The energetic graphics of Yevgeny Chubarov, where "bubbling" corporeal volumes dissolve into abstract monochromes, taking up an entire wall in the spirit of the tapestry-like hanging typical of a cabinet of curiosities, are mirrored in the monumental paintings of Alisa Gorelova, which compare physiology and mimesis in the sensation of life as a material flow. The mirror canvases of Anton Konyukhov, which bear the traumatic marks of strikes and gestures, echo the surfaces of Vladimir Tryamkin, constructed like a rough, perforated grater — an optical trap for the viewer's gaze, which "gets stuck" in it. The totally smooth landscape of Oleg Khvostov, devoid of roughness and inconsistencies of the material world, meets its opposites — the surfaces of Andrey Volkov, whose spiritual vividness resembles the oceanic element, or, on the other side, the expressive brushstrokes of Vladislav Zubarev. Finally, the bricks, tiles, and books of Andrei Syaylev, which mimic distortions in perception, or the surreal porcelain objects of Anna Kazmina, appear themselves as "curiosities" in the finest traditions of the cabinet of wonders.
In the increasingly complex, frighteningly enigmatic modern world, a person tends to trust primarily a small circle of familiar things, which they consciously seek to surround themselves with, intuitively investing a sense of internal order in their arrangement. An order that, they believe, is still possible in reality. This is how what Gaston Bachelard called the "felicitous space" is constructed — a space filtered through the imagination, where the unconscious of our dreams finds, albeit illusory, a shelter.
As Noël Arnaud once wrote "I am the space I am in." Applied to the context of the gallery business, collecting, and curating, this formula could sound like: "I am the art with which I have surrounded myself." The image of a "personal room" filled with artifacts — as the perfect space for the exhibition ideas to form — has united all the artists of the PA Gallery circle in this new project. Creators of the exposition continue to perceive it as an autonomous medium, based on the value identity of both the work itself and the framework for its display and perception that is set by the curator. The formative metaphor this time is the "cabinet of curiosities."
The cabinet of curiosities, wonders, or kunstkamera emerged in the 16th century when traditional treasuries ceased to be merely a means of storing wealth and transformed into a tool for shaping the image of the collector as an enlightened figure — a bearer of an individual yet encyclopedic vision of the world. In the largest cabinets, such as those of Ferdinand I in Vienna, Francesco I de' Medici in Florence, and Rudolf II in Prague, works of art were displayed alongside minerals, shells, weapons, coins and medals, taxidermy specimens, skeletons, vases, clocks, and astronomical instruments. Collectors aspired to create for themselves, as Francis Bacon said, "And so you have, in a small compass, a model of universal nature made private."
The emergence of these cabinets was influenced by the works of the alchemist and physician Paracelsus, who believed that man is a microcosm reflecting all the elements of the macrocosm. The owner of a Kunstkamera thus gained access to the universe in all its diversity. By the 18th century, collecting had come to be based on principles of natural-scientific classification, giving rise to the museum as an institutional form.
The image of a cabinet of curiosities has been revived in postmodern culture. The principle of "strange juxtapositions" declared by curator Jean-Hubert Martin replaces classifications and cause-and-effect relationships with a game of free associations and subjectivity of the view.
This approach to exhibition organization, first seen in Magiciens de la Terre ("Magicians of the Earth") at the Centre Pompidou in 1989 and Curios & Mirabilia at Château d'Oiron in 1993, remains relevant to this day. Galleries are increasingly turning to it.
The Gallerist’s Cabinet presents not only works by all the artists collaborating with PA Gallery but also the private collections of its owners. Brought together, these pieces begin to reflect one another. The skeletal metal structures of Anya Zhelud, which reduce everyday objects — an ironing board, a piano, a floor lamp — to the contours of their boundaries enclosing emptiness, enter into dialogue with the dancing, curved trajectories of Yevgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, formed by paint squeezed directly from tubes. The energetic graphics of Yevgeny Chubarov, where "bubbling" corporeal volumes dissolve into abstract monochromes, taking up an entire wall in the spirit of the tapestry-like hanging typical of a cabinet of curiosities, are mirrored in the monumental paintings of Alisa Gorelova, which compare physiology and mimesis in the sensation of life as a material flow. The mirror canvases of Anton Konyukhov, which bear the traumatic marks of strikes and gestures, echo the surfaces of Vladimir Tryamkin, constructed like a rough, perforated grater — an optical trap for the viewer's gaze, which "gets stuck" in it. The totally smooth landscape of Oleg Khvostov, devoid of roughness and inconsistencies of the material world, meets its opposites — the surfaces of Andrey Volkov, whose spiritual vividness resembles the oceanic element, or, on the other side, the expressive brushstrokes of Vladislav Zubarev. Finally, the bricks, tiles, and books of Andrei Syaylev, which mimic distortions in perception, or the surreal porcelain objects of Anna Kazmina, appear themselves as "curiosities" in the finest traditions of the cabinet of wonders.
In the increasingly complex, frighteningly enigmatic modern world, a person tends to trust primarily a small circle of familiar things, which they consciously seek to surround themselves with, intuitively investing a sense of internal order in their arrangement. An order that, they believe, is still possible in reality. This is how what Gaston Bachelard called the "felicitous space" is constructed — a space filtered through the imagination, where the unconscious of our dreams finds, albeit illusory, a shelter.
Konstantin Zatsepin