On February 23, the exhibition “Fragments” will be opened in K35 Gallery - a study of the theme of memory in the works of Vadim Leukchin and Alexandra Kokacheva.
The project presents works by young artists Vadim Leukchin and Alexandra Kokacheva. Both artists use photographs as the basis for creating their paintings, but they work with the themes of memory and images captured on film in completely different ways.
Kokacheva, while creating a new series of works, refers to her own archival photographs taken as a teenager at family holidays. Amateur photographs, "cleared" of the stylistic signs of the time and transferred to a large paper format, are released from the narrow frames of fixing a certain era and turn into universal timeless portraits.
Leukchin goes the other way - he focuses on the elusive images that are made by the "collective unconscious" of our common past. Due to his age, the artist practically did not find the Soviet era, so the “collage” of memories is formed on the basis of personal feelings, from photos and film materials. Hence the intentional departure from a realistic image to an abstract heap of memories, dreams, vague images of people and animals.
In working with the theme of memory, its unreliability, a collision with temporal and semantic "failures" is inevitable. So, wandering through the labyrinths of his own memories, a person is able to capture with his eyes only some semi-blurred plots and images that now and then pop up in the mind - those very “fragments” of the past, the reality of which every day raises more and more doubts.