From August 25 to September 28, the renovated space of Gallery Szena, located on the ground floor of the Richter Hotel, hosts a solo exhibition by Akhmat Bikanov — “Forms of Doubt.”

About the artist:

Akhmat Bikanov (b. 1996) is a young artist from Kabardino-Balkaria, a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Architecture (MARCHI, 2020). Akhmat’s solo exhibitions have taken place in Moscow and Berlin. He has participated in group exhibitions in Turkey and Germany (“As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories,” Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW); “A bit of Unruly Complexity,” SANATORIUM Gallery), Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair (2021), Istanbul; Blazar Young Art Fair (2021), Moscow; and Cosmoscow International Contemporary Art Fair (2022), Moscow. He lives and works in Berlin.

Akhmat works primarily with watercolor, creating his drawings layer by layer: he applies the solution to paper in such a way that each translucent layer reveals the one beneath it. These layers become evidence of the complex process of creating a work, in which even the artist’s mistakes can be seen. For Akhmat, artistic practice is above all a ritual, an endless process of learning and development, which is why it is important for him to show the value of the mistake — the effect of the perpetual discrepancy between intention and execution. The color of the watercolor plays an important role: it compensates for the lack of brightness and contrast in reality; by painting, Bikanov seems to remind himself that the beauty and color of life exist even on the darkest days.

The optics of Akhmat’s expression are based on personal memory associated with his childhood in Kabardino-Balkaria. Trips into nature with members of a national music ensemble (his mother’s colleagues), family picnics with family friends, afternoon rest in a valley with mountain views, interior portraits — all of these are patterns of fleeting memories of the past, turned into fantasies about the future. The artist’s working method largely reflects the properties of human memory — preparatory graphic studies and sketches are more precise than the watercolor drawings, in which insignificant details give way to color solutions that convey a holistic image. What the artist remembers blurs over time, leaving trails of sensations from lived experience, thus shaping images of memory. Although the space of Bikanov’s works resembles the Caucasus, it simultaneously becomes a fictional landscape of a place where people are united not by ideological convictions but by shared values. This is a safe haven — a refuge free from judgment or coercion — a place free from everything superficial and biased, where everyone can be themselves among like-minded people and friends.

In his artistic practice, Akhmat creates a space of personal mythology capable of containing his own memories, which transform in the process of seeking and creating a world where there is peace and freedom.