On March 1, 2024, Gallery K35 will open the solo exhibition "FALSE MEMORIES" by St. Petersburg artist Natalia Spechinskaya. The show brings together painting, graphic works, sculpture, and a large-scale art object created especially for the occasion.
What could be clearer or dearer than a childhood teddy bear? Once a companion in children's games, it has become the central character around which the exhibition is built. This immersive show, a quest through the artist's imagined worlds, unfolds on the border between reality and fantasy, between genuine memory and phantom image.
The main character and its companions migrate across the different mediums in which the artist works. Through unique techniques and a vibrant play with color, Spechinskaya’s bears are situated within the field of contemporary art objects while still retaining emotional references to each viewer's personal past.
The artist describes the project:
"Symbols of security that we retrieve from childhood—parquet floors, old cabinets and armchairs, the floorboards of dachas—are memories that help us not to be swept away by the whirlwind and speed of the rhythm of modern reality. They are our small anchors of simulated normalcy and stability. For me, the teddy bear is the brightest symbol and memory from early childhood. Who didn't sleep clutching one—a stand-in friend, protector, and mother—when parents turned off the light?
Bears can still perform these duties: they remain that same symbol, but to avoid exposing our sentimentality and the lyrical tenderness of these memories, they hide behind the mask of a contemporary interpretation, behind altered tactility and color.
A kaleidoscope of colorful bears—like false memories—revives forgotten sensations, fearlessly performing their new role."
What could be clearer or dearer than a childhood teddy bear? Once a companion in children's games, it has become the central character around which the exhibition is built. This immersive show, a quest through the artist's imagined worlds, unfolds on the border between reality and fantasy, between genuine memory and phantom image.
The main character and its companions migrate across the different mediums in which the artist works. Through unique techniques and a vibrant play with color, Spechinskaya’s bears are situated within the field of contemporary art objects while still retaining emotional references to each viewer's personal past.
The artist describes the project:
"Symbols of security that we retrieve from childhood—parquet floors, old cabinets and armchairs, the floorboards of dachas—are memories that help us not to be swept away by the whirlwind and speed of the rhythm of modern reality. They are our small anchors of simulated normalcy and stability. For me, the teddy bear is the brightest symbol and memory from early childhood. Who didn't sleep clutching one—a stand-in friend, protector, and mother—when parents turned off the light?
Bears can still perform these duties: they remain that same symbol, but to avoid exposing our sentimentality and the lyrical tenderness of these memories, they hide behind the mask of a contemporary interpretation, behind altered tactility and color.
A kaleidoscope of colorful bears—like false memories—revives forgotten sensations, fearlessly performing their new role."