In-Gate Gallery is pleased to present Faces, an exhibition that meditates on the enduring mystery of the human visage. Bringing together new and recent works by Vladimir Semenskiy, Alexander Morozov, and Iris Terdjiman, the show unfolds from a simple yet inexhaustible premise: the face as a reflection of character and spirit, a living mirror of the immaterial world.
Across cultures and centuries, the face has been regarded as more than likeness. It is the most immediate emblem of identity, a surface through which the inner life flickers. Faces draws on this universal intuition. In every work presented, the viewer encounters the portrait not merely as representation but as revelation: a visualization of the mystical nature of humanity, a portal between the tangible and the unseen.
The human visage endures as a constant carried through millennia. Empires rise and crumble, technologies alter the way we see, yet the face—its contours, its capacity for expression—remains a symbol of continuity. The artists in Faces explore how this permanence coexists with ceaseless change: the passage of time, the transformation of the surrounding world, the shifting languages of art.
Vladimir Semenskiy offers a series of fragmentary studies—Masha, Hands, Feet (2025)—that deliberately withhold the full figure. By isolating gesture and detail, Semenskiy invites viewers to reconstruct presence from absence, to feel the quiet power of the incomplete. The partial portrait becomes a meditation on how spirit can be suggested rather than shown.
Alexander Morozov turns to art history in his Lost Art cycle (2024–25), revisiting and reimagining canonical portraits from Rembrandt to Cornelius Johnson. His reworkings operate like palimpsests: echoes of the past shimmer through contemporary surfaces. In Morozov’s hands, the face becomes a vessel for time itself, carrying the memory of centuries while asserting a distinctly modern pulse.
Iris Terdjiman approaches the portrait as dream and atmosphere. Works such as Into the Trees (After Manet) and Ik ben aan d’aard gehecht met meer dan aardsche banden unfold like visual poems, where color and texture evoke the immaterial—emotion, intuition, the quiet resonance of being. Her faces emerge as both subject and landscape, at once intimate and infinite.
Beyond individual practice, Faces considers the visage as humanity’s most eloquent instrument: a means of expressing emotion, conveying information, and communicating with the world around us. Every glance and subtle shift of muscle carries meaning. In the gallery, these artworks gather as a chorus of expressions—ancient and immediate, personal and collective.
Through the works of Semenskiy, Morozov, and Terdjiman, Faces affirms that portraiture remains one of art’s most profound acts: the attempt to capture not only what is seen, but what is felt and eternal.
