Ekaterina Gerasimenko is a graduate of the Ilya Glazunov Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture and the Baza Institute of Contemporary Art. She participated in a residency at the Salzburg Summer Academy of Art, participated in the ColLab program at the Svody Center for Artistic Production, and graduated fr om the 5th season of the Winzavod Open Studios. In her artistic practice, Ekaterina draws on the traditions of realistic painting and sculpture. Her main interest is the disturbing images that emerge in the gap between reality and the memory of it.

About the curator:

An Kubanova is an independent curator and founder of the Azy School of Contemporary Art.

In her latest series, "Navigation Season," Ekaterina Gerasimenko depicts the Volga during the annual period of intense shipping traffic—at this time, the river becomes a space of movement, wh ere directions are charted, signs are read, and landmarks are chosen.

Work on the series began with a direct interaction, with the encounter of a living human gaze with the dynamic expanse of water fr om a boat. Only sel ect fragments of this unconditioned impression were captured by camera and subsequently became the source material for the paintings. Within the series, and sometimes within a single plane, specific images, as elements of a compositional montage, form, at first glance, a mimetic panorama of the Volga. In keeping with the artist's practice, individual canvases are distinguished by an extreme clarity of language, concreteness, and tangibility of imagery. Taken separately, the works reproduce the effect of the depicted subject's verisimilitude, typical of the realistic painting style, while its emotional restraint, ensured by the photographic base, flirts with the viewer's trust in documentary recording. Nevertheless, the overall visual structure of the series is more complex than its initial impression: it adheres to a rejection of a specific perspective and is distinguished by the incompleteness and fluidity of the depicted reality. This is not a static illustration of river tourism, but a tourism of perspectives. This method of constructing images raises the question of the objectivity of perception: is a universal and neutral vision of reality possible, or is our understanding of it always constructed, like a montage, fr om truncated fragments, erased memories, and shifted perspectives?

The logic of these reflections is reflected in her choice of artistic mediums. The artist utilizes the potential of painting and photography, traditionally claimed to provide precise evidence, to combine different modes of engaging with reality: prolonged observation and instantaneous capture, the recreation of an image and the documentation of a trace. The fluctuating space beyond the ship is defined by the medium of painting, the bearer of a subjective artistic vision, while the ship itself, embodied in print, serves as a reliable support and outlines a clear contour of reality. However, their combination only emphasizes that an image is always formed through choice, and a picture of the world cannot be captured once and is prejudicially constructed anew with each glance. The series offers the experience of independent navigation and internal orientation, demanding active participation fr om the viewer through constant comparison, reconstruction, and reinterpretation of what they see, as opposed to passive contemplation of the final interpretation. The protagonist is not a natural phenomenon, not the cultural symbol of the Volga, but the gaze and the one who bears it. The relativity of perception and subjective reconstruction of reality is not experienced here as a problem requiring resolution, but rather revealed as the only accessible means of cognition. The final point of view is revealed through a stereoscope—an instrument that, against the backdrop of the main body of works, particularly enriches the nature of interaction with visual space. Through its lens, the image is literally layered into intersecting perspectives, requiring the viewer to transform them into a coherent, understandable image.

"Navigation Season" addresses the experience of everyday life, as fluid as a river's flow, wh ere the nature of memory, perception, and imagination forms a space wh ere fiction and fixation meet. In this space, time loses its familiar linearity and is experienced as a condensed coexistence of moments, in which the boundaries of past, present, and future dissolve, and the gaze rests on a mass of frozen uncertainty. However, one learns to follow the flow and capture its slow turns and subtle changes.

The works were created at the Svody Art Production Center.

The works were created at the Svody Art Production Center at GES-2. The exhibition partner is the online gallery "Objenie."

Author and curator tours of the exhibition "Navigation Season"
April 2, 2026
7:00 PM–8:30 PM

Author tour of the exhibition "Navigation Season" by artist Ekaterina Gerasimenko.

April 14, 2026
7:30 PM–9:00 PM

Curator tour of the exhibition "Navigation Season" by curator An Kubanova.

Admission by registration.