Michael Levius's first museum exhibition brings together works from personal projects, public and private collections, and pieces created specifically for Krasnoyarsk.

The artist embraces cinematic vision within the work. The viewer finds themselves before a multitude of works depicting various urban views, unconsciously assuming the position of an outsider, a tourist, or a passerby. We are presented with a kind of heterotopic landscapes—"other" spaces existing within or on the borders of ordinary landscapes, characterized by a blending of contexts and narratives of contemporary culture.

The dense composition, the level of detail, the abundance of characters and layers within the work prompt us to search for seemingly unnoticeable details, constantly expanding the narrative, and pondering it over time from the perspective of a silent observer. Levius's paintings reference a rich complex of images from literature, cinema, video games, music, and comics, revealing the cultural code of the artist's generation. The painted world creates a sense of multiculturalism, simultaneously suggesting typical American buildings, Asian megacities, and the streets of a Siberian industrial city, including the landscapes of Novokuznetsk, the artist's birthplace.

The attempt to capture a specific narrative shifts the viewer's attention to other signs and symbols that we discover repeatedly throughout the work. Levius subverts the idea of ​​fixed meaning, demonstrating that reality is merely a game of searching for elusive traces.

Levius's visual language is formed by his use of various techniques and the combination of several graphic methods. Fragments painted with acrylic on canvas are complicated by additional layers of marker or spray paint. The artist uses stencils to create highly expressive spots alongside crystal-clear drawings. A single canvas often requires several months of work.

The exhibition presents a counterpoint to works from different periods, which serve as portals to different spaces. Individual zones are filled with graphic artwork, in which sketches of characters have acquired the status of independent protagonists. The central section is a special project by the artist, developed for the museum space and referencing both monumental experience and the language of street art. The installation is formed through the convergence of various authorial approaches and techniques within a given space and a limited time.

Alice Nikolaeva

Mikhail Levius is one of the key representatives of the new generation of figurative painting. He was born in 1986 in Novokuznetsk (Kemerovo Region). From 2004 to 2006, he studied at the Novokuznetsk Art School. He graduated from the Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute, Graphics Workshop (2012). Since 2020, he has collaborated exclusively with the pop/off/art gallery. His works are in public and private collections in Russia and abroad. Lives and works in Moscow.