Alexandra Catiere

On 7 September, Kramer Gallery will solemnly open its doors to the public, presenting the works of two artists. A mentor and a student—Anatoly Kuznetsov and Just Alex (Aliaksandra Puhachova).

The title “Transformed Spaces” refers both to the sensations that viewers encounter in the artists’ paintings and to the artists’ life journeys and experiences. The works of Anatoly Kuznetsov are deeply spiritual; he draws inspiration from the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu and his foundational text, the Tao Te Ching. He has passed many of these philosophical ideas, along with his craft, on to Alexandra.

Each of the artists has walked their own path to reach their goals. Each of them has their own “transformed space.” It is hard to say which is more challenging: to obtain an excellent academic education and then embark on the daily search for your own style, or to absorb your mentor’s style, master it, and then begin the difficult process of breaking away to carve out your own identity.

It is no accident that Kramer Gallery opens with an exhibition of these two artists. When Natalia Kramer, the founder of Kramer Gallery, encountered Anatoly Kuznetsov, his art inspired her to start her own private collection. As Anatoly himself describes it, “There is the talent of the creator, and there is the talent of the spectator. When they coincide, the magic called love happens. This feeling requires creation.”

The artists and the gallery share the same purpose—the spiritual development of the individual. Perhaps it is a grand statement, but everyone is simply doing their part: the artist creates, and the gallerist presents it to the viewer.

The artists and the gallery will be happy if they are understood—if the viewer feels the inner dynamics of the works, hears music in the colors, finds an association with their own view of the world, and if their efforts to showcase a different, spiritual space in contemporary art resonate in their hearts and fill them with love.

The art represents an aspiration to compensate for the loss of consistency, to avoid immersion into a world that is disjunct and deprived of integrity. In this sense, an artist transforms his creative work into the process of creation and restoration, and the artistic shape becomes the means to recover the completeness of being. The sphere is a symbolic embodiment of closureness and repeating pattern, which, according to the theory of arts, since the Middle
Ages, has been uniting mind and intuition, and joining the rationality and spirituality.

Cultural nomadism and the mixing of heterogeneous styles made the foundation for the multi-faceted identity of the work by Oksana Mas’ containing all the telematics elements that allow reducing distances and setting national differences aside.

The Ukrainian artist creates her own strategy of expressive opposition to depersonalization by applying strictly individual and yet objective shapes. Subjective memory becomes the key matter for creating an objective and expressive shape with the ability to resist, due to its unique versatility, empty showmanship of electronic media that close us in the permanence of the present.

Her works provide a worthy reply to two-dimensionality of reality display telematics means, concluded in the depth and importance of the author’s art objects expressing her will to open a shape that appeared of her personal creative search and that has nothing in common with the faceless conveyor shaping public tastes, to the spectator’s eyes. The creative process becomes a neo-humanistic attribute of a qualitatively new level of an individual’s opposition that is performed not with an intention to erase the present, but with an aspiration to recreate time flowing smoothly from the past to the future.

The subjective memory is pulsing in the work of art, bringing life to it, like blood in a human body, challenging the monotony of telematics iconography that circulates due to the lack of individual, memory, those unique features that could block the circulation process.

The art of Oksana Mas’, based on the author's motivation consistency, asserts the right to diversity again and inspires the circulation of subjective memory, cleansed of psychological impurities. The highest motivation of the art is the development of an aggregate of the future memory shapes.

The shape becomes a final episode of the confrontation, aimed at demonstrating the way how modern art determines the unique value of versatility, the actual conflict between the human being and the surrounding universe.

Achille Bonito Oliva

Oksana Mas "Congruence"

Commentary from culture manager Marisa Villen, who is familiar with the artist’s work and collaborates with him on various exhibition projects for both government and private institutions:
David Saborido, a plastic artist, works with light as a concept, expressing physical, clear, and direct light that emanates from the work itself, achieved through his technique of contrasting colours and very thin layers of pigment.

Since 2019, he has been exploring this concept of light in his series “Meetings with Light”. The light in his work serves as a key to the creation of art and the search for the essence of a person—two constants preserved over time. For David, light becomes the main character, leading to an extraordinary inner dialogue and reflection.

According to the artist:
"This is 'inner light,' which I experience during the creative process, expressed through the mysterious contrast of light and shadow. It triggers something within me—a light that expresses deep and resonant silence, which I hope and strive to convey in my work."

*"My paintings are born from a personal search for light, where I dwell. Each desire to paint suggests the search for this internal encounter. At first, I never know what might emerge, but gradually, without haste, over days and months of exploration, the work reveals itself. The light I find in my work represents silence for me—a silence necessary to be at peace with oneself.

It resembles a spiritual, creative, strong, sincere, and genuine need to capture the space, full of light and shadow. From the very first moments of creation, I unknowingly find those elusive 'inner landscapes'—situated between the projected lights and shadows. These shadowy areas I create conceptually immerse the viewer into a profound state of silence, one that seems both cleansing and healing.
This is why I decided to share this dialogue with the public. I wanted to bring some light, clarity, and silence into their lives through my work."*
David Saborido “Compositions and Reflections”

David Saborido "MEETINGS WITH LIGHT"

Of Tenderness and Time is the first major Austrian exhibition of French photographer Alexandra Catiere. The show brings together a selection of her intimate, luminous images, capturing fleeting gestures, reflections, and moments that reveal the tenderness and transience of everyday life.

Born in Minsk, educated in New York, and now based in Paris, Catiere has exhibited internationally and been recognized for her poetic and emotive photographic vision. The exhibition features works from several series created over the years, from as early as 2005 to her most recent projects, including Easter Flowers, Behind the Glass, and Nobody Believes That I’m Alive. Through these images, Catiere transforms ordinary moments into subtle, enduring portraits of human experience.