OVCHARENKO presents Mikhail Dolyanovsky's project "RELAPSe"—the artist's third solo exhibition at the gallery.
A balcony is a strange place. A room that somehow opens up to the outside. Random objects are stored here, laundry dries, people smoke, look down, and store things that no longer fit inside.
Ovcharenko's space features canvases with balcony railings. The railings intersect the painting, with figures appearing in front of them, behind them, or somewhere in between. Sometimes it's difficult to discern what exactly is outside.
The canvas surface falters. Holes, tears, folds, and gaps appear. Space is revealed behind the painting. Behind the space, another surface. Or simply a wall. What has already happened happens again, but a little incorrectly. The painting is assembled from traces, scraps, paint, and objects without a particular biography. All of this holds together for a while. Then it begins to behave independently.
The figures appear in awkward positions. They seem to be trying to escape, but it's not entirely clear where. Sometimes they resemble people. Sometimes they resemble the remnants of an image after the image has already been created. The canvas sags, stretches, gathers into folds. The painting here can act like a fold of fat, like a false wall, like a poorly secured structure. At some point, the only option is to collapse the balcony.
A balcony generally doesn't tolerate certainty. It's simultaneously inside the apartment and already outside. You can step out onto it to remain indoors. You can look outside and find yourself on display yourself. Dolyanovsky's works continue the movement begun by the projects "Rat House" (2020) and "Happy Ending" (2024), but now something is returning again. Not literally. Rather, like the material's habit of disintegrating.
Assemblage occurs simultaneously with destruction. The surface opens and immediately tries to close. A figure appears where no one expected it.
Perhaps the balcony has already fallen.
Perhaps it simply didn't exist.
