Béton Center and Osnova Gallery present group exhibition "The Unicorn and the Lost Kingdom", which bring together works of international artists. The project offers a perspective on art pieces that are already in the field but sound differently now.

The present, which is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate, forces one to turn to the memory of the past and raise layers of history. Like archival objects, artists' works speak of a past that does not exist, of lost hopes and faith in the future. Somewhere among them is a Unicorn, a signal that we once failed to see.

Haruki Murakami's novel "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World" tells the story of a commander who sees a unicorn during the battle. "The heavens to whom bloodshed is repugnant send you a warning through the chio-tuan. For the sake of all the gods, keep the empire from blood. Moderation will bring infinite joy. The emperor abandoned his war plans".

At the exhibition space art objects function as witnesses of time, markers of turns and decisions. By presenting the material as a volume of equivalent units and combining different aesthetic principles, genres, and mediums, this visual narrative does not offer unambiguous answers, but describes the present through a genealogy of meaninglessness.

Artists: Albano Afonso, Nikita Alekseev, Olga Grotova, Paruyr Davtyan, Raul Diaz Reyes, Dunya Zakharova, Mariia Ermolenko, Veronika Ivashkevich, Julia Iosilzon, Dasha Kudinova, Ilya Kukushkin, Andrey Pokrovsky, Elena Popova, Julia Spiridonova, Margo Trushina, Jan Zöller, Henning Strassburger

Curator: Anna Zavedii