In her pictorial series «Monochrome», to the viewer Daria Barybina «opens wide» laidback summer landscapes, in which there is room for relaxation and silence. Noonday empty parks, drenched in sunshine: «Those hours when the landscape is the bright glow of Life and a dream”. The monochrome saturated colouring creates an impression of the illusory nature of these visions and brings the painting closer to abstraction. The colours of the series echo and complement each other – most of the works are filled with shades of green and yellow, while the other works are contrasting and executed in shades of pink and violet.

Darya Barybina’s landscapes can be described as sentimental or lyrical, a formulation that historically refers back to the Peredvizhniki paintings of the late 19th century. But unlike the artists of the past, Barybina depicts not the majestic nature but an artificial urban oasis, and the feelings are different here – they are lighter, devoid of pathos and pathetics. The park offers the simple joys of pastime, but the artist wonders if the park becomes a backdrop that hides us not only from the external anxieties, but also from the internal ones. This borderline state can be conveyed through a quote from Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa’s «The Book of Disquiet», which like every phrase in the book, is filled with the hero’s existential experiences: «Trees are merely trees, with their greenery so pleasing to the eye, so external to my cares, my regrets, such comforters of my sorrows, because you have no eyes to look at them with, no soul that, looking at me through those eyes, might not understand them and scoff at them!».