This is certainly one of Pragaleria’s most anticipated exhibitions. After more than four long years of waiting, Nickita Tsoy’s paintings will once again grace the interiors of the gallery at 3 Stalowa Street in Warsaw. During the exhibition „Places where we don’t exist”, a remarkably rich collection of works created between 2018 and 2023 will be presented for the first time outside Ukraine, including, among others, coherent painting series: „Abandoned flowers”, „Falling drapery” and the title piece: „Places where we don’t exist”. For the viewer who has already had the opportunity to encounter the artist’s compositions before, it will certainly be an extremely moving experience to trace the evolution that Tsoy’s work has undergone. Since his last exhibition in Poland, the world has changed almost beyond recognition – becoming a decidedly less friendly and safe place. Although the painter continues to present us with a story about the human being, and in his paintings we still find corporeality in its most biological aspect (deformed, fluid, subject to transformation), today, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, his work is increasingly taking on the characteristics of socially engaged painting. In order to discern further layers of meaning, to discover new interpretative tropes, the bodies in Tsoy’s paintings now need to be analysed in the context of their relationship to their environment. The psychological condition of the figures depicted comes to the fore. In his own words: In my painting work, I develop a historical narrative of the post-ideological climate of recent decades. I see the human being as a bearer of ideological consciousness, who is searching for the foundations and content of his own existence, while accepting the internal conflicts and dissonances that are awakening within him. It is a search for the boundary between anatomy and anti-anatomy, between truth and the distortion of truth.
Pragaleria would like to invite you to the opening of Nickita Tsoy’s painting exhibition 'Places where we don’t exist’ on 23 February 2024 at 18:00 in the gallery at 3 Stalowa Street (Warsaw).
The exhibition will be on display from: 24.02. – 08.03.2024 r.