Islands – KVARTIRA S

The series of works by Daria Klementyeva “Islands” is being shown for the first time and is Daria’s first solo project. The idea came to the artist during the 2020 lockdown. The cycle of works is devoted to islanders absorbed in their daily affairs — merchants, fishermen, sailors. The artist seizes fragments of everyday life, focusing on moments of the ordinary.

Daria Klementyeva, artist: “During the lockdown I was at home, like so many others, in effect locked within the four walls of a Moscow apartment. Working on the “Islands” series became for me a way to break free of that forced confinement, to find myself at the other end of the earth, in another world — bright and sunlit.”

The figures in the works — the islanders — embody for the artist an absolute freedom from the constraints imposed by civilization. Through a realist portrait of her characters, Daria seeks to feel out the deeper meanings of human existence, seizing in her works a discrete moment of ordinary reality.

Saturated, vivid colors and decorative planar solutions create an added tension and a concentration on a single instant of life, torn from a succession of similar ones, underscoring its uniqueness.

Sasha Richard, curator: “Islands are like people, and people like islands. It is not enough to know their coordinates and location; one must know what lies in their depths. To study them long and diligently. To immerse oneself in their everyday life, and only then can one say: “Discovered!”