Florence: assembling the world

Florence unfolds like a scene of internal dialogue between culture, architecture, and personal experience.

The city is assembled fragmentarily, from my photographs, like a memory: the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Ponte Vecchio bridge, a plate with a starry sky from the Basilica of San Lorenzo, and a tree from its courtyard. They do not form a linear landscape, but exist as cultural layers between which the viewer can freely move their gaze. The silver areas act as a boundary between reality and memory — a cold reflection of what has already been lived and preserved within.

At the center of the composition is a modernized Renaissance portrait in Russian style. The choice of heroine is not accidental—Mona Lisa was born in Florence. Measured and ironic, she seems to have let the city pass through her and now holds it in her palms. In front of her is a coffee set. Coffee refers to Italian everyday life, to the ritual of a pause in which thoughts are born. Florence is a famous center of coffee, but here the drink is not so much a detail of everyday life as a symbol of contemplative time, the moment “in between” when impressions settle and become experience. On the table are cultural images of Florence: Perseus by Cellini, Niccol Machiavelli, Venus born and Medusa from the Uffizi Gallery, all of which are ingredients that make up my personal perception of the city. Alongside them is a street artist drawing “Girl...” with chalk. Jan Vermeer, a talented contemporary who evoked emotions and made me want to place him in the same line as the greats.

The painting is constructed as an intellectual collage: painting is combined with graphic elements, and realistic fragments coexist with symbolic ones. There is no desire for documentary realism here—on the contrary, Florence is shown as an inner landscape, where history, art, and personal memory come together in a single image in the mind of the creator.

This is a work about the moment of assembling the world—when the city does not oppress with its scale, but becomes a space of silence, reflection, and personal meaning.