Olga Chernysheva. From the Leaf

The exhibition includes rare early works that have never before been shown to the general public. Among them is the series “Signs” (1989), an example of Chernysheva’s automatic drawing. New works by the artist are also presented, including the watercolour “Brush” (2025), which captures a moment from everyday domestic life — a quality characteristic of Olga’s language — while also reflecting on the relationship between art and life. The artist explores the “uneven boundaries” between the important and the secondary, between event and background, finding poetry in what usually escapes attention. “From the Leaf” is also an exhibition about spontaneity, immediacy of perception, and the ability to “read” the world directly.

The project is based on Olga Chernysheva’s new book “On Drawings,” which brings together the artist’s graphic works from different years. The book will be published by the AZ Museum specially for the exhibition and will include texts by art historian Ekaterina Andreeva and by Evgenia Kiseleva-Afflerbach, the project’s curator.

The exhibition, like its title, is dual in nature. The first section of the project explores the idea of the leaf as a page of a book. In this room, visitors can see Chernysheva’s illustrations for Viktor Dragunsky’s “Deniska Stories” (V-A-C Press, 2023), as well as unpublished watercolours from the project “Metro for Children” (Secession, 2017). A separate stand in the first room is devoted to the book “On Drawings,” presenting works created by the artist specially for the exhibition alongside pieces from earlier series. These are accompanied by the artist’s own commentaries. All the publications listed above are available in the exhibition space for visitors to explore.

The other two rooms of the exhibition, devoted to the image of the leaf as a plant element, offer a special, “non-anthropocentric” perspective, in which people give way to nature. The rooms present different states of nature in watercolours from the series “Washings” (2024) and “A Manual for Robots on Studying Humans” (2019), in the paintings “Sound in the Forest” (2024) and “Moskva River” (2025), in the video installation “Blue Ovals” (2018), as well as in graphic works from different years and photographs.

The exhibition was designed by architect Sasha Kim, who had previously collaborated with the artist. The scenography is built around the key themes that run through Olga Chernysheva’s drawings. The architectural solutions create a synthesized space — at once an artist’s studio and a poetic natural landscape. The project is structured with the same attentiveness to the “real” that defines the artist’s own approach. The exhibition space therefore serves not merely as a backdrop for the display, but becomes embedded in the exhibition’s overall narrative.