Alexey Gromov's solo exhibition "DOLL'S DREAM / ON THE SHOULDERS OF BLIND GIANTS" is a speculative reflection on the nature of the modern artistic process.     

The project mimics the language of a retrospective exhibition in a quasi-universe, where the artist is a doll. A thought experiment using institutional criticism as a method is unfolding in the gallery space. His task is to simulate a situation in which the creator and the work change places, and the question is "who is the artist?" it is brought to the maximum voltage. The doll becomes the author, and the quasi-universe itself is assembled fr om artifacts, debris and interference, through which the "broken language" of our reality emerges.

The exhibition features a large-scale multimedia installation integrated into the architecture of the gallery, as well as a series of medium-format objects imitating institutional exhibition spaces.

"Gromov creates a doppelganger of the reality of the modern institutional artistic process, referring to the tradition of artistic myth — from Vasari's "Biographies" to mockumentary and autobiographical strategies. In the conditions of the post-Internet and neural networks, this myth is bursting at the seams: the presence of the artist, his physicality and authorship cease to be obvious. The project takes institutional criticism to the point of absurdity: the artist is a doll, and the galleries are dollhouses. The figure of the author is reduced, displaced, deprived of autonomy and at the same time turned into an exhibit. The question arises: can the creator himself become a work of art? Wh ere is the boundary between object and subject, between practice and its bearer?" says curator Ilya Kronchev—Ivanov.