XL Gallery presents Nikita Alexeev's solo exhibition "Passages and Paths." The project was implemented in collaboration with the Nikita Alexeev Foundation.

In the text for the 2007 exhibition "Screens," held at the Shchusev State Research Museum, Nikita Alexeev wrote about the internal geography of a house, where heavy furniture represents its "geological features," while lighter furniture, such as chairs or paintings, represents "vegetation," "monuments," and so on. Screens, however, represent a special type of this conventional geography: they shape space, conceal, and enclose. At the same time, such screens are also something to be displayed, something superficial, something to show off. As art historian Sasha Obukhova recalls, for the 2007 exhibition, Nikita Alexeev and David Sarkisyan came up with the slogan: "Down with screens in art!" The term "shirmach" was borrowed from criminal slang, meaning pickpocket. At the time, Alekseev himself spoke of his disillusionment with contemporary art, which seemed to be obliged to be "visually unpleasant or varnished to the point of disgust, anecdotal and provocative."

Nikita Alekseev's series of works resemble chains of reflections—on life and death, on the nature of things and the hidden interconnections of the surrounding world. There seems to be nothing random in Alekseev's works—neither in the expression nor in the material. Be it the Soviet oilcloths the artist took with him on his exile to France and on the backs of which he wrote, or the simple paper on which, sheet by sheet, he created his "Death Drawings." Or screens, because a screen is a tool that allows one to "reclaim," to appropriate a piece of space. The screen itself may not be particularly durable in everyday life, but there's something enduring about the desire to hide, to isolate oneself, to be alone. Sometimes, all it takes is a few zigzag panels.

Nikita Alekseev (1953 - 2021) was one of the key figures in Moscow Conceptualism, a member of the Collective Actions group, and the founder of the APTART gallery. The artist's solo exhibitions were held at the XL Gallery ("10,000 White Tigers Shaved by Occam", 2013; "Towels", 2004; "On 44 Channels", 1996; "Two Moons", 1994), Iragui Gallery ("Sense and Sensibility", 2024; "Pin-Ups", 2011), Multimedia Art Museum ("Closer to Meaning", 2021; "Ellipsis", 2017), CTI "Factory" ("Trinity Painting and Poetry / I See People Like Trees", 2009), etc. Nikita Alekseev's works are in the collections of the XL Gallery, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, etc.