Reason and Sentiment

September 10 - November 16, 2025

Curated by Anna Romanova

The exhibition Reason and Sentiment explores the metaphysical narrative in the evolution of Russian art. A joint project of the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation and the Prometheus Foundation, it spans five decades of Russian art - from the second half of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st.

The metaphysical agenda in Russian art first came to the fore in the second half of the 20th century, amidst a crisis in art caused by the exhaustion of established artistic forms. Excluded from the contemporary art process and working within the hermetic environment of Soviet art, Russian artists found inspiration in classical art and Western modernism of the early 20th century. Each artist developed a personal symbolic system, yet the interest - shared by many of them - in metaphor, allegory, and subjects rooted in "cultural tradition" allows us to trace a distinctive line in the evolution of Russian art. Many figures of the "second wave of Russian avant-garde" also focused on the "metaphysics of light" - a theme that remained central for a wide range of artists up until the late 1980s.

The exhibition Reason and Sentiment presents these trends as a metaphysical opposition of memento mori and memento vivere.

Memento mori - "Remember death!" is an adage from classical antiquity that was widely used in Europe during the Middle Ages and the early modern era and that inspired the artistic genre known as vanitas, which originated in Holland. The theme of life's transience and the finiteness of all things was a hallmark of these philosophical still lifes, which often featured objects such as books, extinguished candles, skulls, jugs, and so on. In the works of Dmitry Krasnopevtsev and Dmitry Plavinsky, the traditional vanitas elements acquire new meaning, transforming from allegory into sign.

Memento vivere - "Remember life!" is a catchphrase popular during the Romantic era; it inspired the emergence of symbolism, spirituality, and exaltation in art. The exploration of the artistic nature of "white light," of the phenomenon of "white on white," was a central theme in the work of artists such as Vladimir Weisberg, Oleg Vassiliev, Vasily Sitnikov, Eduard Steinberg, Ilya Kabakov, Viktor Pivovarov, and more. "Each of these artists responded to this challenge of the times in their own way; for each, the issue of 'white' and 'light' takes on its own form," Ilya Kabakov said.

In the 21st century, metaphysical themes have reached a new level within new media art. The exhibition is conceived as a dialogue between "museum art" and contemporary art, as it includes an animated video by the Blue Soup art group, a video by Platon Infante, and an installation by Dmitry Bulnygin.

The large-scale exhibition at the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation encompasses more than 200 pieces by artists of different generations: Nikita Alexeev, Viktor Alimpiev, Erik Bulatov, Oleg Vassiliev, Vladimir Weisberg, Sergey Volkov, Oleg Drobitko, Dmitry Bulnygin, the Blue Soup art group, Platon Infante, Francisco Infante-Arana, Ilya Kabakov, Boris Kocheishvili, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina, Lydia Masterkova, Irina Nakhova, Vladimir Nemukhin, Alexander Ney, Nikola Ovchinnikov, Alexandra Paperno, Viktor Pivovarov, Dmitry Plavinsky, Maria Serebryakova, Vasily Sitnikov, Ülo Sooster, Ilya Tabenkin, Alexandra Fedorova, Andrey Filippov, Kirill Chelushkin, Sergey Shablavin, and Eduard Steinberg. Works on display come from the collections of Ekaterina and Vladimir Semenikhin, the Prometheus Foundation, AZ Museum, ART4 Museum, In artibus Foundation, Iragui Gallery, Andrey Cheglakov Foundation, Syntax Gallery, and private Russian collections.

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