Duo exhibition entitled Memory Archives brings together works by Semyon Agroskin (b.1961 in Soviet Union) and Dino Chatila (b.1964 in Venezuela) in a bipolar installation of figurative and abstract paintings. Artists’s dialogue questions the connection between past and present reflected in human’s memory.
The theme of the nature of memories is disclosed through two different visual fields – figurative symbolical composition and abstraction.
The flow of images of everyday life depicted in Agroskin’s small format works can be perceived as a flow of memory patterns and a visual streamline guiding in the depth of our conscience and spiritual experience. Figurative works by Agroskin are shown in the interconnection and correspondence with large scale abstract compositions by Dino Chatila. The artworks included in the Memory Archives installation represent and symbolize two fields and two levels of our memory in their emergence and flow. Everyday objects, landscapes and interiors by Semyon Agroskin interact with random and intuitive spaces of Dino Chatila’s abstractions.
The exhibition involves the viewer in an emotional an exciting game of juxtaposition and interconnection between the images of familiar objects as a primary level of our experience and the complex hypnotic structure of abstract works which can be recognized as manifestation of deeper levels of consciousness.
Semyon Agroskin is a multidisciplinary artist and architect who masters the diversity of mediums including painting, drawing, collage, and installation.
As a painter Agroskin follows traditions and implements the approach of academic school of painting and refer to cultural heritage of fine art. Being an important part of his recognizable style and his art practice, the language of painting acts more as a metaphor, symbolizing the constancy of values and timelessness of narratives and meanings disclosed artist's works.
Agroskin’s restrained palette which sometimes approaches to monochrome enables the artist and the viewer to perceive the idea and logic of depicted objects directly without being caught by the emotional level of perception.
Compositions and objects imprinted in Semyon Agroskin’s works are characterized by an almost religious ascetic austerity, a cult of simple things, symbolizing freedom from the domination of material values.
Most of the artist's works are permeated with a mystical feeling of an invisible human presence and of things taking place even when the character is not pictured. A broken cup, an overturned chair, scraps of food, or a door ajar are witnesses of someone's history, rituals, and everyday life.
The imagery of Semyon Agroskin is not static, it is not about momentary things or a specific moment in time, it is about before and after, about the irreversible and constant flow of time, transforming the things that we witness into kaleidoscopic memories.
Dino Chatila's creations exist at the intersection of abstraction, minimalism and kineticism, defining a specific artist’s space in contemporary art.
The artist works in various techniques - painting, sculpture, and installation. The exhibition includes recent series of painting on canvas and wooden panel created in 2023.
Dino Chatila’s creativity has a deep psychological basis and is directly related to the personal experiences of the author. Each work is truly "lived" by the artist, being an object, an interlocutor, a field of experiment and a diary of his feelings and emotions.
The process of creation of Chatila's objects balances on the verge of composing, adding layers and elements, transformation and destruction, bringing into collaboration two poles and two interdependent elements of any life process or cycle. Layers of pictorial matter appear one after another, overlapping each other and creating a field for subsequent mechanical action - scratching, detaching layers of paint, freeing fragments of the surface of the painting.
Clearing and deforming multilayered pictorial space, the artist literally pushes the boundaries of the invisible, penetrating the depths of the layers of painting, exposing the hidden basis of the canvas.
Dino Chatila’s work is akin to the movement with the flow of time and against it. Time is recorded in every layer and in every fragment created by the artist, and by cleaning the outer surface of the work, he returns to the beginning, to the starting point.
Chatila's abstract compositions are visual "memory maps", spaces that bring together a multitude of feelings, memories and images imprinted through the artist's gesture and "encoded" on canvas, wooden or aluminum panel.
Dino Chatila (b. 1964 in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela) started his artistic career in 1994.
Since 2014 he works and lives in Brussels, Belgium.
Selected solo and group exhibitions include: Lauren Van Middelem Gallery, Knokke-Heist, Belgium (2023), Luc Van Middelem Gallery, Knokke-Heist, Belgium (2022), Rettory Tribbio Gallery, Trieste, ITALY (2021), Pascal Polar Gallery, Brussels, BELGIUM (2016 -2017), 151 Gallery, Brussels, BELGIUM (2015), Oran, ALGERY (2015),Balastra Gallery, Balâtre, BELGIUM (2015, 2013), Art Nocturne, Knokke-Heist, BELGIUM (2013), Artists’ trail in the framework of "St Martin Feast”, Tourinnes-la-Grosse, BELGIUM (2013), ART-GENT, Gent, BELGIUM (2013).
Semyon Agroskin (b.1961 in Moscow, Soviet Union) graduated from MARCHI (Moscow Architectural Institute) in 1984.
He participated in numerous exhibitions in Japan, Germany, Belgium, France, USA, Great Britain, etc.
His works are included in the collections of Tretyakov Gallery, State Hermitage Museum (Russia), the State Russian Museum, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, in private and corporate collections in Russia, France, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, Israel, USA.
Artist lives and works in Moscow and Israel.
Recent selected personal exhibitions include: "Se voir est difficile", Galerie du Tableau, Marseille, France (2023), "Passer sous silence", L Galerie, Paris, France (2023), Home exhibition, Paola Messana projekt, Marseilles, France (2022), "Home theater", Kaluga, ICC (2022), "Flashback", Club Gallery "Open Club", Moscow (2021).
Selected group exhibitions include: "Dialogue in time and space. National art of the XX – XXI centuries”, MMOMA, Moscow, Russia (2023), “Home and family. Pictures of Peaceful Life, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2022 – 2023), "Waiting for Don Quixote", Voznesensky Center, Moscow (2022), Cosmoscow, Moscow (2022), "Instant Fish Hunt", Zverev Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow (2022), “Travel Diaries”, KultProekt Gallery in CUBE Moscow, Moscow (2022), «ART PLATFORM-ON» 2022 , Gwangju, South Korea (2022), "ID", CYBERFEST, Maina Gisich Gallery, St. Petersburg (2019), Cyberfest, St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum (2018), "Birch Time", A.Pushkin Literary Museum, Moscow (2018), "Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism", Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2017 – 2018).