PENNLAB Gallery presents Vera Laponkina's exhibition "Structures." The project explores the changing human perception of the simultaneous existence of a digital environment and a congested urban space. The exhibition will run from April 15 to May 22, 2026.

In her works, Vera Laponkina addresses the image of Moscow—a city with a high density of architecture, technology, and visual signals. Here, the gaze dissipates between the screen and the body, reality and its digital reflection. The smartphone becomes a medium through which events are recorded and perceptions are formed. As a result, memory loses its integrity and stability.

In the project, the city is presented as a system of rules and structures: fences, screens, schedules, and interfaces form an environment in which people exist as elements of a shared mechanism. The digital grid becomes the key image of this space: it unites the city, technology, and perception. Within this structure, a person loses autonomy: they either synchronize with its rhythms or fall out of it—and in both cases, they lose the integrity of experience. This state is reflected in the images themselves: they deform and disintegrate.

The project is realized at the intersection of analog and digital photography. The works are hand-printed using the C-print technique, but instead of a traditional negative, a smartphone screen is used. It serves as a light source for the enlarger, revealing the pixel structure of the display in the image—a digital grid is embedded in the fabric of the photograph.

The project was realized in the workshops of the Svody Art Production Center at the GES-2 Community Center.