A STAR IS BORN IN THE CLOUD
A solo exhibition in the Triumph Gallery
Curator Polina Mogilina
Curator Polina Mogilina
We used to love the year-end suns, the narrow
plains where our gazes flowed like those raging
rivers of our childhood. Now there's nothing but
reflections in these woods restocked with absurd
animals and well-known plants.
André Breton, Philippe Soupault.
The Magnetic Fields (1919)
Evgeniya Dudnikova's exhibition A Star Is Born in the Cloud is a truly remarkable journey into the world of enchanting phantasmagoria conceived by the artist's imagination. Her works open doors into shimmering spaces, sprinkled with radiant stars and brilliant carpeting of wildflowers. While, at first glance, Evgeniya Dudnikova’s paintings may seem either stories from a fairy tale or fantastical dreams, they actually turn out to be portals into parallel worlds, woven together from metaphors, symbols, and creatures. The artist depicts fragments of the spiritual world unconstrained by the physical laws of the material world, where the latter is a mere projection of the former. In the space constructed by the artist, the membrane that separates the real world from the otherworld is so thin and elusive that the viewer can go back and forth all the time.
Artworks by Evgeniya Dudnikova are marked by the depth and complexity of the meanings, judgments, and signs contained therein. In each work she contemplates the nature of things and looks for interrelations between objects. The rich abundance of images, combined into constellations, is a distinctive feature of Dudnikova’s style, alike to the surrealist techniques. Her images mostly deal directly with nature, emerging from it or producing new lifeforms. The artist’s profound connection with nature dates as far back as her childhood that she spent in the famous village of Kratovo, surrounded by forests and their dwellers. The attachment to wild nature, traveling, and intense observation of the elements and natural phenomena have now become an integral part of her creative practice as well as her personal identity. Moving left to right from painting to painting, the viewer experiences in sequential order, on the one hand, a day from early morning to deep night and, on the other, all seasons of the year from spring to winter. The loop is closed not only through the sequence of the stories as presented, but also through color and tone. All paintings are augmented with short curatorial notes that unfold into a parallel plotline to expand the audience's sensual experience. Although a single ecosystem, each artwork at this exhibition is a self-contained story that stands on its own. Composing the works, Evgeniya combines colorful unique images into puzzles, and if you undertake to solve them, you may gain insight into the essence of things or may come up with your own version of reality.
Polina Mogilina
Artworks by Evgeniya Dudnikova are marked by the depth and complexity of the meanings, judgments, and signs contained therein. In each work she contemplates the nature of things and looks for interrelations between objects. The rich abundance of images, combined into constellations, is a distinctive feature of Dudnikova’s style, alike to the surrealist techniques. Her images mostly deal directly with nature, emerging from it or producing new lifeforms. The artist’s profound connection with nature dates as far back as her childhood that she spent in the famous village of Kratovo, surrounded by forests and their dwellers. The attachment to wild nature, traveling, and intense observation of the elements and natural phenomena have now become an integral part of her creative practice as well as her personal identity. Moving left to right from painting to painting, the viewer experiences in sequential order, on the one hand, a day from early morning to deep night and, on the other, all seasons of the year from spring to winter. The loop is closed not only through the sequence of the stories as presented, but also through color and tone. All paintings are augmented with short curatorial notes that unfold into a parallel plotline to expand the audience's sensual experience. Although a single ecosystem, each artwork at this exhibition is a self-contained story that stands on its own. Composing the works, Evgeniya combines colorful unique images into puzzles, and if you undertake to solve them, you may gain insight into the essence of things or may come up with your own version of reality.
Polina Mogilina
