At the ARTSTORY gallery from April 24 to June 22, 2025, the exhibition "Layered" by Kaliningrad artist Evgeny Prokhorenko is on view. At his first solo exhibition in Moscow the artist presents more than 30 works being shown for the first time.
Evgeny Prokhorenko is a representative of the Kaliningrad street art scene. For 20 years the artist has worked under the pseudonym El Kartoon, realizing bold projects in the urban environment whose main aim is to reflect on the relationship between people and the environment in which they live. In 2022 Evgeny Prokhorenko decided to rebuild his expressive language, reset his coordinate system and enter into a dialogue with an audience accustomed to experiencing art outside the urban space. At the same time the artist does not abandon his "street" experience but lays it as the foundation for a new chapter of his creative life. To create his artworks the artist uses concrete, metal, lime, wire and wood, bringing elements of the urban environment into the gallery space.
All works on display are parts of the large series "Layered" and are made of metal and a mix as close to concrete as possible. The texture and pattern of each metal layer are unique — the artist uses material at different stages of oxidation, a process that can take several years. Each sheet of metal that Evgeny Prokhorenko uses in his works is left to "age" for a long time; often this process takes several years. Parts of some works in the "Layered" series were exposed to external factors for 7–10 years. The artist places metal sheets in different conditions and observes the changes that time brings.
Evgeny Prokhorenko. Exit. 2024. Wood, metal, rubber
"It's all on the level of feeling — you just know when it's time to take the sheet and use it. Sometimes you look and understand that it's ready, has changed enough. And that if you leave it, you'll overdo it and spoil it," the artist explains.
The study consists of four independent parts that together form a coherent statement on one of the themes that interests the artist. In the context of the exhibition they are perceived as complementary chapters of a single multi-layered narrative.
The first chapter of the "Layered" series is called "Context" and is devoted to the study of people and the environment in which they exist. The artist creates the image of a universal city made up of noise, speed and the intensity of flow — all these elements exert pressure on the individual. Instead of creating numerous portraits of separate people the author captures the image of a homogenized crowd deprived of faces. At the same time Prokhorenko's figures differ from one another — the artist emphasizes that despite everything each person "carries an inner light." Alongside reflections on the city the author considers the traces people leave in their environment and those that society leaves on the individual.
The second chapter — "Movement" — is devoted to the movement a person makes within the crowd. It is not only, nor even primarily, about the physical movement of the viewer and Prokhorenko's figures, but about the internal work each person performs. Becoming part of the crowd, a person feels the strength of community but at the same time acutely feels loneliness, looking at the backs of those ahead and having no possibility to turn back. Movement in the crowd, according to the artist, allows a person to see the flip side of society: to feel, on the one hand, support and reliance, and on the other — indifference and absolute apathy.
The third chapter — "Finding" — is devoted to the search for and preservation of a person's identity. In it the artist raises the issue, as he himself calls it, of the "maturation of the personality." Prokhorenko touches on an important and timely question for everyone: the formation of the human self, closely observing how a person's coordinate system is constructed. The artist draws attention to the value of both this process and its result, which is often so significant that it acquires weight and becomes something tangible.
Evgeny Prokhorenko. Decisions. 2025. Wood, metal, rubber
Evgeny Prokhorenko was born in 1982 in Chernyakhovsk (Kaliningrad region). He lives and works in Kaliningrad. Since 2008 the artist has explored the possibilities of stencil technique. In recent years the artist has begun working in gallery spaces, experimenting with a new form.
Recipient of the Third Prize of The Kutz Awards, Bristol, England. Participant in the international Stencil Art Prize (2015, 2016, 2019), Sydney, Australia. His works are in the collections of the Street Art Museum (Saint Petersburg) and the Russian Centre of Art (Kaliningrad), as well as in private collections in Russia and Kazakhstan.
