Dates: 20/02/2026 – 29/03/2026
Address: The EKATERINA Cultural Foundation (21/5, Kuznetsky most St., Moscow)
K35 Gallery presents a new exhibition project, «Keeper of The Garden» at The EKATERINA Cultural Foundation. The exhibition space has been transformed into a labyrinth-garden, and only the keeper is truly capable of comprehending it. But what do we protect when we stand guard over the garden — the blooming order or the wild exuberance of life? A memory of the past or a project for the future?
«Keeper of The Garden» is not merely an observer; it is a mediator between worlds: culture and nature, form and chaos, the visible and the hidden. This exhibition is a study of the very gesture of contemplation, where the garden presents itself as an archive of a worldview. It calls not for the contemplation of beauty, but for a dialogue with life force itself, in which we are simultaneously masters and guests.
Oleg Maslov and Vilgeniy Melnikov construct their harmony in the Garden. Here, metal can turn out to be fragile, and living vegetation, intertwined with lattices, can narrate the eternal. Their works are a tactile experience of the past within the present, an attempt to sense the pulse of time's mutability in the gap between the ideal plan and the living, unruly reality of nature.
The project is built on a balance between the fragile and the monumental, the classical and the modernist, the play of light and the fracture of forms. This Garden is a dream, an attempt to tame nature with reason, to create an ideal world where ancient gods coexist with peony flowerbeds, and the symmetry of the alleys obeys not only the laws of geometry but also the laws of utopia.
A formal park is always about human power over nature, but in reality, we are merely a part of it. And we have a unique chance to be thoughtful contemplators of the natural processes of time.
Curator: Sergey Dorokhov
«Keeper of The Garden» is not merely an observer; it is a mediator between worlds: culture and nature, form and chaos, the visible and the hidden. This exhibition is a study of the very gesture of contemplation, where the garden presents itself as an archive of a worldview. It calls not for the contemplation of beauty, but for a dialogue with life force itself, in which we are simultaneously masters and guests.
Oleg Maslov and Vilgeniy Melnikov construct their harmony in the Garden. Here, metal can turn out to be fragile, and living vegetation, intertwined with lattices, can narrate the eternal. Their works are a tactile experience of the past within the present, an attempt to sense the pulse of time's mutability in the gap between the ideal plan and the living, unruly reality of nature.
The project is built on a balance between the fragile and the monumental, the classical and the modernist, the play of light and the fracture of forms. This Garden is a dream, an attempt to tame nature with reason, to create an ideal world where ancient gods coexist with peony flowerbeds, and the symmetry of the alleys obeys not only the laws of geometry but also the laws of utopia.
A formal park is always about human power over nature, but in reality, we are merely a part of it. And we have a unique chance to be thoughtful contemplators of the natural processes of time.
Curator: Sergey Dorokhov
