Syntax Gallery UAE

Syntax Gallery AE is pleased to announce its participation in Fictional Landscapes project, where it will present the works by Olya Kroytor, Liudmila Konstantinova, Anna Komarova, Vasilisa Palianina.
Fictional Landscapes, a groundbreaking exhibition showcasing 28 women artists across five galleries and led by three curators took place in November 2024. Fictional Landscapes was open at The Foundry Downtown Dubai.
Fictional Landscapes brings together artists from the UAE, Russia, Iran, Armenia, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Iceland, USA and more. These artists who live and work across the globe, look at landscapes — urban, imagined, natural and artificial — as a profound reflection of personal and collective experiences. 28 women artists gather spatial narratives, each bound by the powerful, collective lens of womanhood. Through this exhibition, the female perspective takes centre stage, celebrating resilience, beauty, and strength in every stroke and sculpture.
By using the theme of landscape, the artist’s transcend current geopolitical boundaries and address critical social motifs, making Fictional Landscapes a compelling exploration of unique visions in an ever-changing world. This exhibition is curated by a distinguished team including Nadine Khalil, Alisa Bagdonaite, and Serafima Kostrova, and is organised by women-led galleries.
Through a diverse range of media, including textile, video, painting, and performance, Fictional Landscapes explores how environments extend beyond physical terrains to embody mental and emotional spaces shaped by passing memory, identity, and migration. The artists negotiate their bodies and the spaces around them, delving into issues such as patriarchal violence and political reality, while also reimagining relationships between time, place, and power.
A key objective of Fictional Landscapes is to emphasise the representation, visibility, and valuation of women’s work in the contemporary art world. This exhibition highlights the persistent challenges faced by female artists and advocates for greater recognition, equity, and fair representation in the global art market.

The exhibition by Dmitry Bulnygin took place in the Material Space for Book Culture in Switzerland with a support of SYntax Gallery (AE) in March 2024

Matter Matters is a retrospective look at the forest (French) period of the artist’s work, marking a pivotal shift since 2019 when he relocated to another country. The move imbued the materiality of existence with newfound significance, leading to a stage in the artist’s career characterised by economical solutions in creating works utilising both organic and inorganic waste of human from human activity.

The artist's systematic exploration of the changes in materials delves into the themes of time's subjectivity and ruthlessness. At the same time, the choice of materials is significant, each decision containing an undercurrent of resistance and a touch of irony.

In this artistic narrative, the obsolete and the dead imitate the vibrant and the living. The natural absorbs the anthropogenic, and vice versa, weaving together cultural strata from different eras into a bizarre palimpsestic tapestry. This layering doesn't signify the end of old artefacts; rather, it showcases a cycle where any waste may be given a new life, where the mass produced is distilled into the classical, and creation and destruction go hand in hand in a dynamic equilibrium.

Yet, this spectacle of decay, disembodiment, transformation, and echoes of different cultures is not at all infected with the sombre moralising typical of mediaeval memento mori. Rather, it is a spirited punk rendition of the ancient adage ‘letum non omnia finit’ (‘death doesn't end it all’), a deft juggling of timeless quotes through the use of sustainable upcycling practices.