Concrete Whispers, Brutal Dreams

About

With Concrete Whispers, Brutal Dreams Shtager&Shch presents a dialogue between artists Emma Papworth and Kirill Chelushkin. Born on either side of the Iron Curtain, both in terms of geography and age, the two artists share a visual language that draws on architectural elements as signifiers of cultural identity.

Emma Papworth creates sculptural artefacts that hint at lost civilisations and speculative futures, while Kirill Chelushkin conveys constructivist ideas through large scale sketches and drawings of dark dreamscapes that are at once familiar and alien, comforting and unsettling.

Both artists respond to a longing for certainty with idiosyncratic shapes and textured surfaces that evoke an aesthetic of control and stability. Stripped to their raw components, Papworth's concrete whispers and Chelushkin's brutal dreams encourage viewers to question perceived facts of modern life and to reimagine failed utopias.