“Syncretism, Infinity and a Rose” is an immersive exhibition curated by Maxim Didenko. It took place in Solyanka Gallery, Moscow and was based on Pavel Semchenko’s lifelong artistic legacy, including paintings and objects that he created throughout 25 years of his practice (while being a co-founder of the world-renowned AKHE theatre). The exhibition was initially built as a retrospective of Semchenko’s works and ran for three weeks, from 16 February to 8 March. It occupied the whole of Solyanka’s numerous gallery spaces – an impressive 16 rooms varied in size and ranging from traditional ‘exhibition’ and ‘museum-like’  to quite unexpected and sudden – like the stairways and basements.  It brought together a series of live performances gathering some of the most renowned contemporary Russian artists. ‘Syncretism’ combined sudden combinations of artistic explorations, mixing different kinds of media – paintings, films, installations, music, theatre and dance. Performers, musicians and artists such as Vladimir Varnava, Vladimir Volkov, Oleg Zhukovskiy and Anisiya Kronidova participated in daily happenings in the gallery allowing the audiences to experience often unexpected and interactive performances. The primal curatorial thought was to explore the idea of the “Dead” and “Alive” art. The idea of ‘Syncretism’ as a whimsical process of trying to combine the ‘impossible’ objects and scenes as if  aiming to achieve ‘new artistic normality’ was allowed through the playful interaction of ‘happenings’ that allowed the audiences to experience somewhat ‘uneven’, ‘distorted’ gallery experience. Here the paintings and installations became ‘alive’ with specially created sound, light and theatrical performances.

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This invited the viewer to immerse into the distorted reality through experimental communication. Thus the gallery turned to some kind of ‘playing field’ for numerous artists (followers and admirers of Semchenko’s work) and audiences giving a possibility to connect to Pavel’s works through the exploration of contemporary digital media – visual and sensory. The audiences were welcomed to participate in the exhibition – sometimes by having a possibility to ‘destroy’ works of art. This included an  invitation to ‘vandalise’ some of the artist’s original prints in a special ‘vandalism’ space by the recorded guidance of Pavel’s direction to ‘take the paint, scissors or glue’. In this ‘alive’ process the viewer became a part of the exhibition as the vandalised work was exhibited and kept in the gallery.  Also, some members of the audience  could become an actual work of art themselves. Evening’s life-drawing sessions performed by Pavel accompanied by live music,  allowed lucky members of the audiences to lie down in the ‘capsule of infinity’ (a transparent coffin-like structure) while his image is being screened and transformed into live video art, as well as painted onto canvas by Semchenko  and live-streamed on Youtube and Facebook.