Formally, all the works presented in the exhibition belong to the genre of landscape painting. However, starting from natural forms found in nature, Shuripa creates a unique world balancing on the threshold between reality and dreams. Individual elements of the landscape, which in painting often serve as background scenery, suddenly increase in scale, completely occupying the foreground of the composition and becoming the main protagonists of the narrative.

The color of the background also acquires particular significance. Ranging from impenetrable black to vivid, almost toxic hues, it marks different stages of sleep. The artist maintains that on the way from the dark space of the brain falling asleep to dreams in the deep-sleep stage, there comes a moment when familiar images suddenly transform, and the laws of nature instantly change, giving rise to a new reality. It is precisely this process that Stanislav Shuripa sought to capture in his new series of paintings. It is no coincidence that several canvases presented in the exhibition are united in the Terraforming cycle, referring to the climatic adaptation of new worlds to sustain forms of flora and fauna familiar to us.

“An image can tell a story about something else, or it can speak about itself, about its ability to live many lives in imaginary worlds. A few seconds before falling asleep, the laws of nature change; this experience of transitioning between worlds was already familiar to shamans. It is precisely these transitions between darkness and light, waking and dreaming, figure and ground, that constitute the deepest layers of imagery,” says Stanislav Shuripa.

Stanislav Shuripa was born in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on June 20, 1971. He is an artist, curator, and lecturer at the Institute of Contemporary Art Problems (IPSI). In 1997, he received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of the History of Culture in Moscow. Between 2001 and 2002, he completed the New Artistic Strategies course at the Institute of Contemporary Art Problems, and in 2004 earned a Master of Arts degree from the Valand School of Fine Arts at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden).

In his artistic practice, Shuripa works with painting, rethinking it through the aesthetics of the digital environment, computer games, and science fiction. He participated in the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013) and Manifesta (2014). In 2018, he received the Innovation Prize in the Book of the Year category.