ANDREI DMITRENKO
Here is my
shimmering cloud. This fragile cloud, corroded by the rust of the word, will never disappear. Crippled by time, it allows me to play with the perception of space through melancholy, filled with both the past and the present, the volatility of things, the fragility and loss. Everything falls apart to fall back together
…an endless process.
/
2023
Created images here resonate with each other, the space, and emptiness, creating potential visual preconditions for the unfolding of a poetic body infused with mutual consent of playing with power and control. This body, subjected to prohibitions, transforms into a landscape with limits, wounds, dots and lines, surfaces and voids, where the division between the possible and the impossible is felt. The tension created here is not confined to a single experience, but rather multiple ones. The dreams and secrets of this bound body are intertwined in tiny knots of time-worn matter. Concealing obvious interpretations of tension reveals the possibility of liberation from total dependency and vulnerability amidst crumbling fantasies
2022
‘...Is the body portrayable as a gendered unit? In a family-property-oriented society, rigid codes still regulate the acceptability of perception by divorcing the body that is permitted to procreate from its privacy and marginalisation, if not its secrets and dreams. In an ideal world it should not be an outlet for the latter, but a combination of the former – not primacy, but a right.
When conceiving the project, Vladivostok-native Dmitrenko drew inspiration from a modernist novel by Yukio Mishima, in which speech determined the shapes for creating a masculine body. Gymnastic discipline for the sake of bodily perfection was combined with literary introspection. In a similar fashion, these works were put together around a photoshoot for prints featuring the 'bear' type, right down to pierced nipples on the hirsute chest, that the public may recall from techno parties. However, this phallonarcissistic mirroring does not quite present the full picture: the artist depicts scattered glass beads of techniques developed over the years of research, from poetic wordsmithery to melancholic reminiscence. According to American art historian and critic Douglas Crimp*, ever since the AIDS epidemic, melancholia has been a significant poetic vehicle for queer art.
Recollection is looking for signs of the bygone, as if in a family archive, but retouched in a way that the retro-nostalgic does not interfere with novelty, and the private acquires an impersonal address. The tradition of reusing obsolete marks of history (jewellery boxes – for rebus sculptural miniatures, thick paper – for drawings) dates back to Soviet romantic conceptualism. This figurativeness is revitalised by the mnemonic setting of artistic labour: the author was taught to sew and embroider by his mother and started using these feminine-coded handicrafts after reaching maturity; he noted glass beads when interacting with his father's fishing tackle work – Oedipal introspection complicates the gendered division of labour and introduces lyricism into it. As in the sentimental literature of the late 18th–early 19th century, depiction does not present a statement as it is, but hints at it inseparably from concealment, layers, curtains, staying-in-the-box, secrets, and tears concealed by an optical trick...’
(from the text of artcritic and curator Egor Sofronov)
*Douglas Crimp. Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002
2021
The exhibition is dedicated to memory. The starting point was a found picture of a seascape devoid of any temporal references. The collected works constitute a poetic expression based on the fragility of time perception, depicted through the prism of past artifacts. In all the works, text and poetic elements remain conduits to additional visual narratives. Each wall features only one work, which clings to a particular characteristic of another, creating a chain of projections that break and outline the space into a shimmering cloud.
This fragile cloud, corroded by the ‘rust of the word’, will never disappear. Crippled by time, it allows you to play with the perception of space through melancholy, filled with both the past and the present, the volatility of things, the fragility and loss.
Everything falls apart to fall back together
…an endless process.
/
Born in 1990 in Vladivostok, Russia
Based in Leipzig, Germany
Andrei Dmitrenko is an interdisciplinary artist based in Leipzig, Germany. He graduated from Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok with a degree in Graphic Design and attended the Baza Institute of Contemporary Art and Theory in Moscow. He is currently studying Media Art at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst/Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.
His practice engages with memory, nostalgia, melancholy, and oblivion. He explores how the past persists in the present — not as a coherent narrative, but as fragments. These scattered fragments are assembled into artificial forms that attempt to capture what has already been lost.
He works across video, installation, photography, graphics, textiles, sculpture, performance and text. Specializing in mixed media, he explores contrasting textures and material qualities. These contrasts are not always immediately visible, as he often introduces a subtle disconnection between his interventions and the original properties of archival materials.
Dmitrenko strives to create a universe infused with layered meanings and melancholic memories. Within a delicate balance between poetry and visual narrative, he creates a tension between documentary and fiction, celebrating materials and textures across a wide spectrum of interpretations.
EDUCATION
2024 — now HGB Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig, Germany
2019 — 2021 Institute of Contemporary Art and Theory BAZA, Moscow, Russia
2008 — 2014 Far Eastern Federal University, graphic design, Vladivostok, Russia
SELECTED SOLO/DUO SHOWS
2022 I am both the wound and the sword. I am a delicate flower that has broken through this steel, Alisa Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2021 Shimmering cloud, Art Gallery Arka, Vladivostok, Russia
2021 Embrace, almost envelop, duo show with Kirill Mikhailin, Alisa Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2020 Fragile depths, FFTN, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2019 You’re like a noise in this little landscape, Center for Contemporary Art Zarya, Vladivostok, Russia
2018 Wet stones thrown into the water column, Art Gallery Arka, Vladivostok, Russia
2017 Signals, Center for Contemporary Art Zarya, Vladivostok, Russia
2016 Memory of dust, Art Gallery Arka, Vladivostok, Russia
SELECTED GROUP SHOWS
2026 Inter(-)Views, HGB Gallery, Leipzig, Germany
2026 Uncovering Timelines, HGB, Leipzig, Germany
2025 Haunted II | Outside, Mulhouse, Alsace, France
2025 Ex-æquo, ChezKit, Pantin, France
2025 Terms and Conditions — Policing Images project, in cooperation with the Harun Farocki Institut Berlin, Leipzig, Germany
2025 Mignolino, Pinky Space, Dresden, Germany
2024 I write your name, Alisa Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2023 Q*, Shtab Space, Moscow, Russia
2022 The poetics of space or house, as a place woven of poetic images, dreams and memories, Stary Oskol, Russia
2022 7.753:forest, Center for Contemporary Art Chudo, Kursk, Russia
2022 Vol. 1 now or ever, Talking Cure, Moscow, Russia
2021 Transfer. Projection. Processing, Center for Contemporary Art Winzavod. Winzavod.Open project, Moscow, Russia
2020 Dream of the down, Center for Contemporary Art Zarya, Vladivostok, Russia
2020 Closed fish exhibition. Reconstruction, Voznesensky center, Moscow, Russia
2020 Support group, Special project of the Moscow Biennale for Young Art, in cooperation with Cube Moscow, Moscow, Russia
2019 Morskaya, Center for Contemporary Art Zarya, Vladivostok, Russia
2019 Cosmoscow Contemporary Art Fair, Center for Contemporary Art Zarya booth, Moscow, Russia
2017 Environment, Center for Contemporary Art Zarya, Vladivostok, Russia
2017 Noise through a dream, Vladivostok International Biennale of Visual Arts, Vladivostok, Russia
2017 Rebels at the edge, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia
2016 New poverty, in cooperation with Vladivostok School of Contemporary Art, Vladivostok, Russia
2015 Sol, Art Museum of Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia
2014 Funicular 5, Museum of Modern Art Artetage, Vladivostok, Russia
READINGS/PERFORMANCES
2025 Gazing at the Stars, performative reading of the poem Three Hours for the Dog, Juri Gagarin Sternwarte, Eilenburg, Germany
2026 As If a Tiny Hoof Turned Me Into a Goat, HGB Gallery, Leipzig, Germany
RESIDENCIES
2017 Center for Contemporary Art Zarya, Vladivostok, Russia
2024 Hellerau, Europäisches Zentrum der Künste, Dresden, Germany
SELECTED LINKS
https://spectate.ru/fishmen-expo/
https://www.ofluxo.net/embrace-almost-envelop-kirill-mikhailin-and-andrey-dmitrenko-at-alisa-gallery-moscow/
https://russianartarchive.net/en/catalogue/document/L58050
Works are in collections of Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Art Gallery Arka, Alisa Gallery, Center for Contemporary Art Zarya, Art Museum of Far Eastern Federal University, as well as in a number of private collections.
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