“Art has always been, and remains, a space for dialogue. In the current context, I believe it is essential, as an independent gallery, to encourage the circulation of ideas and to imagine new models of cultural engagement, free from any geographical or political constraints.”
The inaugural exhibition “Searching Eye” invites viewers to discover a selection of artists represented by the gallery. From magic realism to op art and abstract expressionism, it offers a broad panorama of artistic approaches spanning several decades. The exhibition brings together works by: Igor Chelkovski (1937, lives and works in France), Lev Povzner (1939, lives and works in Russia), Michael Chernishov (1945, lives and works in the United States), Tatiana Andreeva (1951, lives and works in Switzerland), Natalia Turnova (1957, lives and works in Russia), Igor Skaletsky (1978, lives and works in Germany), Tim Parchikov (1983, lives and works in France), Natacha Habarova (1985, lives and works in Russia), and Evgeny Muzalevsky (1995, lives and works in Germany). The title of the exhibition echoes Diana Vreeland’s celebrated phrase, “The eye has to travel,” reminding us that true perception in art requires constant movement — a quest for new impressions and perspectives. The eye should not remain confined to the familiar: it must be trained, challenged, and invited to explore diverse visual worlds in all their richness. “Searching Eye” illuminates this diversity and unfolds it as a coherent journey.
The exhibition develops through successive registers: scale gives way to detail, bursts of color to the discipline of monochrome, figurative imagery to pure abstraction. Guided by the artists, the viewer’s gaze embarks on a journey across eras and styles — moving from distant views to close-ups from outer form to hidden depth — constantly reinterpreting the spaces of painting, drawing, and sculpture. This exploration opens with artists who, as early as the 1960s, began systematically questioning the very mechanics of perception.
The exhibition thus forms a polyphony in which the gaze — alternately drawn in, multiplied, or destabilized — explores the many dimensions of the visible. “Searching Eye” appears as a true inquiry into the act of seeing, into our way of observing art and “listening” to images. As Paul Claudel once wrote: “It is up to us to listen, to lend an ear to the unspoken.”