LONDON.- PM/AM announces The Dreams I Don’t Remember, a solo presentation of new works by Daria Dmytrenko. The artist conjures creatures that dwell somewhere between nightmare and self-portrait. Her figures –amorphous yet anatomical, grotesque yet majestic– emerge from the recesses of her subconscious, relics of a prehistoric psyche. Alongside the paintings, the exhibition also features new sculptural extensions of her mythology.

Dmytrenko’s creative practice is akin to meditation; keeping her mind entirely blank, she allows unconscious imagery to surface. The creatures come unbidden, warped by the Slavic mythology that pervaded her childhood fears. While these beings have always haunted Dmytrenko’s practice, in earlier works they were far more abstract. Now they arrive with flesh, muscle, wrinkles—even teeth. They grow increasingly specific, as if sharpening in resolution. Dmytrenko’s work often elicits the same reaction; recognition, an emotion shared by the artist. It is only then she knows a piece is finished.

Though frequently labelled surrealist, Dmytrenko resists the term. Her aim is not to distort, but to revea—not to escape reality, but to explore its foundations. The works speak to a collective unconscious, carried by the same mythic current that connects Grendel’s mother with Plato’s fractured creatures; beings with a forgotten majesty, both foreign and familiar. Although her creations evoke Bosch’s hellscapes, their visceral rendering is different in design. Where Bosch revels in all that is crude and sordid, Dmytrenko wields anatomy to exalt, rather than to debase. She finds grandeur in the grotesque, leaving the search for beauty forgotten and unimportant.

Dmytrenko’s subjects are inherently feminine, recalling that they are first and foremost self-portraits, each a mirror held up to the innermost recesses of her mind. It is for this reason they are painted in caves and forests; places of secrecy and concealment where the subconscious is at home. Dmytrenko’s fascination for things often maligned is clear. Skin folds, sags and undulates—in the light of Botox, nips and tucks, her work appears to be a rebellion. Dmytrenko privileges age and monstrosity in the place of youth and beauty, emancipating her creatures from any superficial connotations of femininity and leaving only divinity and immortality. The visual politics of our world throw those in Dmytrenko’s into sharper relief. In her primordial vision, there is no ‘aesthetic’ eternal life, no wisdom untouched by malevolence.

Daria Dmytrenko (b. 1993, Ukraine) lives and works in Venice. After receiving her initial artistic training in Dnipropetrovsk, she studied painting at the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture in Kyiv, and later graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice.

Her work has recently been featured in solo exhibitions including Journey to the Center of the Mind (Stems, Paris 2024), What’s Behind the Gloom (Setareh, Düsseldorf 2024), and Who’s Afraid of the Dark (SECCI, Milan 2024). She has participated in exhibitions at institutions such as Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa and Palazzo Monti, where she was an artist-in-residence in 2021 and 2023, respectively. The Dreams I Don’t Remember at PM/ PM, London, marks her first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom.