The pop/off/art gallery presents the exhibition "Ode to Joy" by Arkady Petrov, one of the leading painters of the 1970s generation. This is the artist's eighth solo project at pop/off/art, which follows his extensive retrospective "Born in the USSR. The Art of Arkady Petrov," which is currently being showcased at the Hermitage-Ural Cultural and Educational Center (Yekaterinburg). The exhibition will be curated by the gallery's founder, Sergey Popov. Previously, he worked on Petrov's projects at the Russian Museum (Paradise with the Kremlin, 2008) and the Museum Center "Ploshchad' Mira" (formerly KIC, the exhibition "A Beauty with a Star: Arkady Petrov's Soviet Mythology", 2008), and he has also authored several articles about the artist's art.

The exhibition will feature over 30 paintings fr om 2020-2026, which will be exhibited for the first time. They are characterized by an expressionist style that is not typical of the artist, through which Petrov captures archaic motifs and the origins of world culture, inspired by the images of Paleolithic Venus. These figures do not appear as a quotation, but rather as a destination within his practice, which stems from his exploration of Soviet mythology and popular culture. The figures, arranged in a total installation, reflect an important aspect of Petrov's work: joy is not just an emotion but an existential state. The characters in his works are trapped in a single circle, a shared dance that has no beginning or end. It is a final dance wh ere joy and lamentation become indistinguishable, and the circle itself is a symbol of both community and individuality. 

Arkady Petrov's poetic approach to working with text is an important aspect of his practice. The artist incorporates advertising slogans, exclamations, fragments of everyday conversations, and notes into his paintings, such as "Buy Kiev cutlets," "I want a tender and passionate love," and "A woman's breasts sell anything from bicycles to pop music." This diverse verbal material is woven into a unified compositional logic, making formal slogans or sentimental romances take on an almost incantatory, ode-like tone. In his works, Petrov places high and low, advertising and poetry in the common field of speech, and seemingly random phrases of different tonalities play the role of commentary-subtexts of the captured era. 

The musical optics for the exhibition becomes not a metaphor, but a constructive element of the statement. “Ode to Joy” addresses three musical traditions at once: the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the song “Joy” by Nick Cave, and African-American gospel music. In Schiller's text set to music by Beethoven, joy is a spark of the divine, a force that can unite what tradition has strictly divided. In Cave's work, joy is different—it comes not as a reward, but as a testament to the everyday. In spiritual Christian songs of joy and gratitude, exultation is inseparable from the ritualized experience of life as a gift. Petrov's "Ode" is conceived between these registers—the Beethovenian grandeur, the Cavean minimalism, and the vibrant traditional melodies.

Arkady Petrov's painting practice has never been limited to the visual tradition – it is fair to consider it through the prism of related fields: poetry, literature, music. Such an approach is synonymous with the form of "ode" as a genre with a high pitch and rhythmic arrangement. In the poetic tradition, an ode is always an address, enthusiastic and direct, in music – a solemn structure capable of expressing great feelings. Petrov's joy is rooted in this modality – it is not private or hidden, but an exclamatory feeling that is accessible and open to everyone.