The Garden Keeper

February 20 - March 29, 2026

Curated by Sergey Dorokhov

Hosted by the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, K35 Gallery presents its new exhibition - The Garden Keeper. The exhibition space is transformed into a labyrinth garden, which only its keeper is truly capable of comprehending. But what do we protect when we stand guard over a garden - a flourishing order or the wild exuberance of life? The memory of the past or a vision of the future?

The Garden Keeper is not only an observer but also a mediator between worlds: culture and nature, form and chaos, the visible and the concealed. The exhibition explores the very act of contemplation, with the garden serving as an archive of perception and feeling. It invites not just passive admiration of beauty, but a conversation with life's vital force - a realm where we are both hosts and guests.

The project seeks to find a balance between the fragile and the monumental, the classical and the modernist, the play of light and the fracture of form. The Summer Garden is a dream, an attempt to tame nature through reason, to create an ideal world where ancient gods coexist with beds of peonies, and the symmetry of tree avenues follows not only the laws of geometry but also those of utopia.

Oleg Maslov and Vilgeniy Melnikov construct their own harmony within this Summer Garden. Here, metal may appear fragile, while plants intertwined with lattice structures speak of eternity. Their works offer a tactile experience of the past within the present; they are an attempt to sense the pulse of time's fluidity in the gap between an ideal dimension and the living, untamed reality of nature.

A formal garden symbolizes people's dominance over nature, yet in reality we humans are only a part of it. And here, we have a rare opportunity to become thoughtful observers of nature's temporal processes.

Participating artists:

Oleg Maslov is an artist and a conspicuous figure on the contemporary Russian art scene. He began his career within the vibrant Leningrad underground of the 1980s as a Neo-Expressionist painter. In the 1990s, after becoming a professor at Timur Novikov's New Academy of Fine Arts, Maslov, together with Viktor Kuznetsov, turned toward classical aesthetics, working across painting, performance, and photography. In the mid-2000s, the artist’s method and style underwent a transformation that continues to define his practice today. His dense, vibrant paintings are based on the artist’s own photographs: flowers, mountain landscapes, views from Lake Valdai and Hungary, and fanciful staged images. At the heart of his work lies the immediacy of feeling - like a photographer seeking, in a fleeting instant, to capture the sensation of wind and the fragrance of plants.

Maslov's works are held in the collections of the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Gasunie corporate collection (Netherlands), the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art, and other major institutions and private collections.

Vilgeniy Melnikov is a contemporary Russian artist and sculptor. He developed his distinctive style through experimentation with free form-making and the transformation of objects. Working primarily with metal, the artist elegantly deforms and controls sculptural form. He views sculpture as an organic extension of architecture, the urban environment, and the natural landscape. Melnikov creates reinterpretations of Antique, Renaissance, Baroque, and Postmodern sculptural traditions, reshaping them and filling them with his own structure of messages. The individual technical process behind his method often produces unpredictable results, making the artist a contemplative witness to the moment of creation.

Melnikov's works are owned by institutions such as the State Russian Museum, the AZ Museum, the Anatoly Zverev Museum (Moscow), the Igor Sukhanov / D.K. Gromov Collection, the Underground Museum and Pavel Neganov Gallery (Yekaterinburg), and more.

Dealing in contemporary art, K35 Gallery opened in Moscow in 2008. From its inception, the gallery has been working to expand the boundaries of the Russian art market. Representing internationally recognized Western artists, K35 has consistently introduced Russian audiences to contemporary art from other countries. The gallery has also supported emerging artists, actively collaborating with both Russian and international creators. K35’s portfolio includes numerous exhibitions across various venues, participation in international art fairs, and joint projects with leading Russian museums, including the All-Russian Museum of Decorative Arts, the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, the Arkhangelskoye Museum-Reserve, and Zaryadye Park.

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