The Children’s Game of Connect the Dots in the Curator’s Adult Scenography

Paul Wunderlich, installation view of NEITHER / NOR: The Intimate Geography of Contradictions, Indra Gallery, London, 2026. Courtesy Nina Miller Collection and CARC

London. A private collection opens its holdings and thereby enters an active cultural dialogue. Nothing unusual perhaps, yet this does not take place in a museum but in a private gallery. The process is orchestrated by the Centre for Arts, Research and Culture (CARC), which most often works with programmes connected to research based projects and also develops international cultural links between London and other artistic centres. According to our observation the “rest of the world” in this case seems to mean primarily America.

The starting point of the exhibition was a group of lithographs by the German artist Paul Wunderlich (1927–2010) presented from the Nina Miller Collection. Wunderlich, a painter, sculptor and master of graphic art who emerged in post war Germany and worked between Hamburg and Paris, is known for his refined sensuous figuration. His graphic works established the initial direction of the curatorial composition. In this sense they function not simply as historical material from the collection but as a conceptual axis around which a dialogue with contemporary abstract practices unfolds.

I am always interested to see the result of an exhibition when two curators work on a project together. The curatorial concept was developed by Michaëla Hadji-Minaglou while Alina Khalitova was responsible for the selection of the artists. Michaëla Hadji-Minaglou is a very experienced curator and, to be honest, it seems that much of the success of the project rests on her experience and professional judgement. The starting point contained quite a mixture of different elements and at first glance the enterprise could easily have appeared risky. Nevertheless the result is not bad at all. It is certainly not without imperfections but it feels rather fresh.

Michaëla Hadji-Minaglou is a curator working between London and Paris. She worked at Afikaris Gallery in Paris where she curated exhibition projects and represented artists at major art fairs across Europe, the United States and Africa. Alina Khalitova is a curator and artist working between London and New York. She studied art history and in 2021 she received the CERINNO Prize from the Nina Miller Collection. This allowed her to establish closer professional relations with the owner of the collection and its principal curator.

The Nina Miller Collection itself is best known as one of the most significant private collections of Picasso ceramics. At the same time it was assembled throughout the lifetime of its owner and also includes painting, graphic works, photography and even items of clothing.

Installation view of NEITHER / NOR: The Intimate Geography of Contradictions, Indra Gallery, London, 2026. Courtesy Nina Miller Collection and CARC

The concept of the exhibition NEITHER / NOR: The Intimate Geography of Contradictions is built around the idea of the coexistence of opposites. The curators propose a space in which different artistic languages interact, most notably historical graphic works from the Nina Miller Collection and works by contemporary artists. The dialogue between them unfolds as a field of tension between figuration and abstraction. The intellectual framework of the project refers to the surrealist thought of André Breton. In one of his texts he speaks about a particular point of the mind where opposites cease to appear contradictory. As Breton wrote there exists “a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, the past and the future cease to be perceived as contradictions”. The viewer encounters this quotation repeatedly on the columns of the gallery where it appears throughout the exhibition space.

Wunderlich’s figurative works are immersed in what might be described as a sea of abstraction created by the contemporary artists. Rather surprisingly this proximity does not produce a sense of opposition. On the contrary Wunderlich’s works begin to appear almost as origins or progenitors. Perhaps our thinking simply works in this way. When we see a historical museum level artist next to artists of a later generation the mind automatically tries to connect the dots and construct a logical relationship between them. After visiting the exhibition one is left with precisely this feeling, as if participating in a children’s game in which scattered points must be joined together until a recognisable image slowly appears.

Around Wunderlich’s works the curators construct a field of contemporary abstract practices, each addressing in its own way the question of the slipping form. 

Viktoria Sokolova is represented by the diptych Cobalt Echo I and Cobalt Echo II (2026). In her practice she works primarily with painting and acrylic. Her works often reveal an attempt to organise a constantly fragmenting world through the strict structure of a grid. In this diptych the squares painted in acrylic were first taken apart and then reassembled on the canvas to form a new composition.

A similar theme of fluid form appears in the work of Valeriy Iakovlev. The artist most often works in sculpture yet the exhibition presents his painting Untitled (Study for Sculpture) (2024). As the second curator Alina Khalitova explained, Iakovlev himself usually does not regard his paintings as independent works but rather as preparatory studies for sculpture. Having received an academic training he has been accustomed to showing primarily his sculptural works. For this reason the curator decided to give his painting the opportunity to be seen independently from the sculptural practice.

Installation view of NEITHER / NOR: The Intimate Geography of Contradictions, Indra Gallery, London, 2026. Courtesy Nina Miller Collection and CARC

Aksinia Kupriianova (Stars, 2025 and Two Faces, 2026) is best known for her graphic works which are strongly figurative. Her painting however almost always exists on the boundary between abstraction and figure. Images appear and dissolve almost immediately and the viewer must readjust their own visual optic in order to recognise them again. The artist herself says that she experiences painting differently from drawing and in painting she never aims for the degree of figuration that is possible in the dry medium of graphic work.

Varvara Dmitrieva is most often known for large scale analogue prints documenting her ethnographic performances. In those projects the boundaries of geography, time and gender become blurred. In the exhibition the artist presents a different object, a mask approximately 120 centimetres in diameter. This work also touches upon the theme of disappearance because the very function of the mask is to conceal any fixed identity.

Lola Alimova appears in the exhibition not because her entire practice is devoted to the theme of disappearance or the boundary between abstraction and figuration. Instead a particular work Against the Frame (2023) attracted Alina Khalitova’s attention during a visit to the artist’s studio. In this work the main subject is not abstraction itself but the structure of the canvas. The frame hidden behind the surface emerges through the pressure of pastel and becomes the central image of the work. As a result the concealed structure becomes the true protagonist.

Elena Magerramova perhaps corresponds most directly to the conceptual theme of the exhibition. Her practice explores layers of the image, abstraction and perception. She often works with plexiglass and one such work is included in the exhibition. Acrylic layers are applied to the reverse side of the transparent surface so that the first layer becomes the most visible for the viewer. The other works The Surface (2026), The Image (2026) and The Screen (2025) are built through systems of transparent layers and thicker accumulations of paint.

The most intimate works in the exhibition are those by Zibeyda Seyidova, Where Silence Dwells (2025) and Veil of Presence (2025), both measuring 30 by 40 centimetres. This scale is characteristic of her practice. These are not large canvases dominating the space but rather an intimate conversation. In her painting the subject is always timeless, and what could be more timeless than space and time themselves. Time present in her works unfolds through the layered structure of the painted surface. When the angle of viewing changes, earlier layers and gestures of the brush begin to appear. This is an effect that photography cannot capture. In a certain sense it functions almost like a hologram within painting.

After moving through the exhibition one begins to understand clearly the curatorial concept of Michaëla Hadji-Minaglou. She distributed the works of Wunderlich across the space in such a way that the viewer constantly performs a mental reassembly. From one work to another a movement appears, a thought-waltz of vision. Because Michaëla proposes a particular scenography the viewer is given a sequence of actions through which they gradually begin to connect the dots and to understand where different impulses originate in the history of art. It is a sensation one usually experiences within museum walls rather than in a gallery.

Tom Denman, residing in London, is a distinguished freelance art critic whose perceptive articles have featured in eminent publications such as Art Journal, ART PAPERS, ArtReview, Art Monthly, Burlington Contemporary, e-flux, Flash Art, Ocula, and Studio International. He earned his PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Reading, focusing his research on Caravaggio and the noble-intellectual milieu of seventeenth-century Naples. Presently, his critiques primarily explore the subtleties and emerging trends within contemporary art.