The painting "Blue-Pink" was created by Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov while working on his solo exhibition "Second Skin" at the Anna Nova Gallery. The project is rooted in the artist's personal experience, as his childhood spent in hospitals due to a rare kidney disease instilled a sense of bodily dissociation and otherness in him. Ilya explores these themes through the use of fabric, a soft and malleable material that resembles the body's natural covering but also belongs to industrial culture. The disconnect between the fabric's actual properties and its symbolic meanings forms the central tension of the project.

Fleece and leather, the key materials that Ilya works with, serve as metaphors for the body, memory, and trauma. The artist also uses them in his paintings. In the work "Blue-Pink," he sought to recreate the texture of fleece and its organic form. The visual images on the canvas
also evoke the experience of extreme magnification — observing fabric or skin through a microscope. "The closer you get, the deeper you immerse yourself in the microcosm and the cells," says Fedotov-Fedorov. Ilya's artistic practice and his background as a genetic bioengineer are reflected in the textures of fleece, which begin to resemble molecules.

(c) Anna Mayskaya, Research Assistant of Anna Nova Gallery