Co-curated by  Anzhela Popova , Tatiana Antonova

Human life is made up of memories, they fill our minds like castles in the air. Some of them may bring us back to happy days, others, on the contrary, as invisible witnesses of bygone events, are able to ambush us at night and cause nightmares. Thus we can observe the patterns of the mind and trace where the wind "blows" from. But all our words and thoughts are not born, they come to us. The brain creates the narrative itself, believes in it and gets frustrated, all because it is very difficult to admit that there is no meaning to life. There is life and that's all. Like the weather.

The exhibition "Castles in the Air" is an attempt to explore these elusive processes, to look into the future through the prism of the past and to try and expand the field of imagination. Memories, as one-time casts of the human subconscious, are layered on and dissolve to remind us of our constant transformation. What is felt and experienced is never forgotten and that is the only perceptible part of memory. Art is based on experience, not knowledge. The paintings, objects and ceramics in the exhibition reliably store phantoms of memory.

Nikolay Morgunov's monochrome paintings are a peculiar interweaving of trajectories and grids as traces left behind by human activity. His works are a reflection on the theme of life lines, an opportunity to keep the link between the real and the imaginary. The ceramic vases by Alena Muhina are a way of searching for self-identity and analysing external circumstances through the change of unstable figures. Vladimir Chernyshev's graphics show us the way into the otherworldly world of memories through peculiar "arches" of time, they reflect the imprecision and vulnerability of the alluring world of reveries and memories.

Memories - like snippets from the past - lose their vividness and sharpness with the passage of time. Without documentation, they become dulled in our memory. Every time we revisit a memory, it becomes a documentation of itself and distances us from the real event. These distortions and projections are explored by Fedora Akimova in her objects with embroidery elements, while François Patoue explores the influence of colour patches as a supposed reference to the most vivid memories. Bruno Gambone's ironic ceramic figurines and objects by Alena Muhina take us back to a carefree childhood.

The exhibition is the result of rethinking the theme of the transformation of memory, inner experiences and rebirths. Today's self will never be the same as yesterday's, so our memories will always be new.

Artists
Nikolay Morgunov
Alena Muhina
Fedora Akimova
Bruno Gambone
Vladimir Chernyshev
François Patoue