The synthetic exhibition project “12 dreams of Kharms” consists of:
- 12 big sized 80 x 120 monochromic abstract compositions of Spb artist Simon Gulyako, who was exposed during the 56th venetian, 9th Berlin, 6thMoscow biennale of contemporary art, multi-timed exponent of the State Russian museum, State Hermitage, the member of the unit of Russian artists, participant of the International Art Fairs: Art Helsinki, Art Riga, Art Honkong/
- curators text of Elena Gulyako, graduator of the Mosow Printing Academy,book-illustrator department & SSE MBA programs.
- many optional attractions for the everyday interest towards demonstrated objects: the suitcase of D.Kharms, where his manuscripts were kept during the blockade (provided by collector), the samples of vanguard fashion by S.Gulyako for the everyday fashion show, professional actors, who read Kharms’s poems, the utility objects from the antique shops of the Kharms’s period

The project was realized in the Spbart.com Gallery 2017
The aim of the project was to demonstrate the turn of the abstract painting into visual tool for the perception of the main lines of D.Kharms’s creativity by means of abstract works of S. Gulyako
The creativity of D.Kharms is a challenge to the society, deviation from the settled norms & as a result- hostility & irritation of a public, the same reaction, as a rule, accompany the abstract art.
Irritation-united emotion, that’s why D.Kharms became the favorite writer of an abstract artist Simon Gulyako, that’s why he devoted him 12 works.
The present project doesn’t show the variety of S.Gulyako creative approaches, but focused on his relationship with the poetics of D.Kharms.
S.Gulyako is the artist of the abstract method, which is definitely not illustrative or narrative,it doesn’t have mimetic & can’t fix the texture of life in its vivid details & a logical averages, it’s net catches other visual analogues of Kharms’s mind.
The researchers (for example M.B.Yampolsky in his book “Forgetfulness as a source “(Reading Kharms,1998), defined the general motifs in Kharms’s lyrics, drama & prose. They are several. I think, Simon Gulyako is more nearer to the “window” & a “water/fluctuation”. The researcher names the window - the unusual optical device, the transformer of the name into spatial, geometrical structure & geometrical diagram into letters. The window acts as a translator of the images into words & the words into images. S.Gulyako effectively found this visual translation.Straight lines (perhaps, the construction of the window frame or the cross-glued defensive paper tapes) lost their geometry, but at a time they got mobility & something like other cellular existence. They resemble preparation of organic material under microscope: the labirynths, colonies, spirals. They are monogenic, thanks to fluctuation, filling all these arms & canals-that is a process of mutual penetration similar to blood sirculation. S.Gulyako is not framed by the scale. Micro becomes macro & the picture transfers into star sky signs. As Levi-Stross said “guiding star itinerary“. Or if you take the distance from air balloon - the footsteps of citizens on the yellow snow. In this case it is the trace of living, the trace of Kharms.
“..the extract from the Kharms poem about observer in the balloon & last words: ok, the city will be live”
Elena Gulyako, 2017