Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Triumph Gallery are pleased to present Shining of the Star and Labyrinth of the Minotaur, a solo exhibition by Alexey Dubinsky. Part of the MMOMA Young Art Support Program and the Young Lions initiative, the project explores subjects of memory, identity, and inner life.

Central to the show are fourteen paintings depicting rooms. Within the context of the exhibition, the room represents a physical space occupied by Dubinsky’s characters, backdrop to their lives. The recurring motif simultaneously serves as a visual metaphor for the artist’s mind, where images, reflections of past experiences, are amalgamated. Here, facts are intertwined with fantasy due to the impermanence and selective nature of human memory.

Speaking of his incredibly personal works, meditations on family, an endless journey, and loss of connection, Alexey Dubinsky explains, "[these paintings] are ultimately about how fleeting each moment is, how fickle one’s memories. One’s story is based on certain reference points, formative experiences that shape one’s perception of the world and their attitude towards it. It is often difficult to determine which of these experiences were real and which are mere figments of imagination, fabricated visions that influence your reality. Kinetic artists have overcome the previously impenetrable barrier between science and art, crossed the boundaries separating painting, sculpture and architecture, and embraced a range of experimental techniques, including multimedia and electronics. New aesthetics and forms are reflected in design, urban planning and ways of organizing space.

As curator Sofia Simakova notes, "Dubinsky's Moscow workshop, a room in a communal apartment in the famous Lancere House, or a squat in Milyutinsky Lane, as the locals call it, became the prototype for this meta-space. An artist’s workshop is his microcosm, somewhere to find deeper connection with themselves and their work. The image of the room has a cinematic and theatrical quality: in the narrow corridor, as if on a stage, the artist’s personal story unfolds, from his childhood to meeting his first love. Moving from city to city, Dubinsky has been rootless throughout his life and has "carried" the image of the room within himself, from Grozny to Nizhny Novgorod, from Moscow to Tbilisi, where he is currently living."

Poultry Yard
2020–2021
Oil, acrylic, and pastel on canvas, 165 × 112 cm

As curator Sofia Simakova notes, "Dubinsky's Moscow workshop, a room in a communal apartment in the famous Lancere House, or a squat in Milyutinsky Lane, as the locals call it, became the prototype for this meta-space. An artist’s workshop is his microcosm, somewhere to find deeper connection with themselves and their work. The image of the room has a cinematic and theatrical quality: in the narrow corridor, as if on a stage, the artist’s personal story unfolds, from his childhood to meeting his first love. Moving from city to city, Dubinsky has been rootless throughout his life and has "carried" the image of the room within himself, from Grozny to Nizhny Novgorod, from Moscow to Tbilisi, where he is currently living."