Current: Dream Scars. Paris Pop-up

Victoria Kosheleva presents still lifes in sumptuous reds and blues, dotted with pollen-like pigment that seems to diffuse the flowers’ scent across the canvas. Here, eyes and smiles are hidden within the composition, animating the image and enlivening the painting’s sensuousness. One of the references for these flowers are teenage memories; for example her father who loves gardening would regularly place bouquets on the table. While memories are typically thought of in black and white, at times they are so charged with emotion, that they are saturated with intense colours. The bathroom is also a space that Kosheleva revisits regularly. It was a place of refuge for her as a child and teenager, where she could lock herself in, daydream and hide. Kosheleva explores memories as refuge and daydream as survival. For the poet Louise Glück : “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”

Olya Avstreyh’s sensitive brushwork makes her images tremble with desire or uncertainty. At times, the imprint of the brush is left visible, giving the surface a scratched quality that engages the viewer’s body, as the eye instinctively imagines its tactile sensation. Paper or canvas becomes a skin. Her quivering or flowing lines create movement and allow for metamorphosis to take place. A nude woman wearing dark boots transforms into a spider-like girl, with a rippling effect that evokes an expanding desire. In another painting, a person tilts their head back, eyes closed, as a snail approaches, held in obtrusive escargot tongs, while a mischievous double stares directly at the viewer. The scene oscillates between extreme sensuality, the grotesque of sophisticated dining and a sense of threat.

Nikola Đelošević’s The Damage Has Already Been Done series casts a monastic-like coy figure that moves through dreamscapes. The space is structured by medieval architecture and characterised by a meditative atmosphere. Arches, as seen in the works of De Chirico or even Fra Angelico, have a long history of acting as portals to a different realm, a metaphysical space. Yet, one of the arches in Đelošević’s painting is damaged, conveying a sense of hurt. In another painting rectangular shadows suggest a landscape marked by loss. In other instances a rectangular shadow is a place to hide, balancing the image with a deadpan sense of humour. In Đelošević’s work it is the landscape and structures that are scarred, evoking at once historical events and interior states of longing.

Giovanni Leonardo Bassan adopts a contemporary Instagram-like square format and immerses us in meadows of yellow and green. Lee Jye, a K-pop star, becomes an expressionist nymph and her followers are flowers. One of the paintings is done on an army blanket, lending a moss texture to the composition. The depicted character recalls Titian’s Man with a Glove in the Louvre and could also be read as a melancholic soldier, indirectly referencing the sadness of our war climate. Bassan’s works carry a queer sensibility, where pop idols, art-historical figures and pastoral fantasy dissolve into fluid identities.

Filip Koludrović presents photographs silkscreened on fabric of Wrestlers that he documented in the basement of the Red Star Stadium of Belgrade. The wrestlers are rendered in melancholic greys and blues, which soften the image, in addition to the softening effect of the fabric. While they are fighting they seem to also almost be supporting each other; their bodies form a continuous sculptural bond. This interlacing body shape is reminiscent of a möbius strip or interlocked chains and becomes a symbol of opposing forces: connection and confrontation; strength and tenderness. The motif is repeated like an icon across different supports. The sculptural quality of these works, but also their texture bring to mind Robert Mapplethorpe’s early objects that assembled affectionate and erotic photographs with fabric such as silk scarves.

Tenderness, struggle, and anxiety punctuate the exhibition, revealing perhaps how we absorb our current geopolitical situation of prevailing conflicts and the vulnerable states it puts us in.

Thilo Reich’s sculptures of recycled metal take the imprint of overlooked patterns on the city’s ground. That which is usually stepped on and unnoticed is suddenly given attention. The patterns originate from sites that carry meaning for the artist. The pavement is approached as a form of skin. Cracks, seams, repairs and compressions become the graphic elements of the artwork. In Reich’s work the skin-self evolves into the skin-city.

Oona Doyle