EXHIBITION DATES : In person and online from 17/7 – 4/9
INTRODUCTION :
Anima Mundi is delighted to present The Planet of Giant Grasshoppers, the inaugural solo exhibition of Ukrainian artist Oleksii Shcherbak at the gallery.
Autobiography is often understood as an act of faithful recollection, yet Shcherbak proposes something more ambiguous. For him, the deepest truths are not recovered through documentation or description, but through invention. Since childhood, he has returned to an imagined world populated by improbable creatures, unfamiliar figures and mutable landscapes, finding within the imaginary a language capable of expressing experiences that realism alone cannot contain. Rather than offering an escape from reality, perhaps this invented world reveals a deeper autobiographical truth; one in which memory, longing, fear and revelation are not merely remembered, but reimagined...
Autobiography is often understood as an act of faithful recollection, yet Shcherbak proposes something more ambiguous. For him, the deepest truths are not recovered through documentation or description, but through invention. Since childhood, he has returned to an imagined world populated by improbable creatures, unfamiliar figures and mutable landscapes, finding within the imaginary a language capable of expressing experiences that realism alone cannot contain. Rather than offering an escape from reality, perhaps this invented world reveals a deeper autobiographical truth; one in which memory, longing, fear and revelation are not merely remembered, but reimagined...
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Shcherbak's figures are often distorted, but never grotesque. They possess an unmistakable vulnerability and deep humanity, encountering grace through instability. Seeking beauty within conflict or disturbance becomes a continual balancing act - echoing something fundamental about the human condition: that certainty remains elusive, and meaning is rarely fixed. Like Beckett's protagonists who “...must go on...can't go on… go on" or Kafka's characters who inhabit realities whose logic forever eludes them, Shcherbak's characters persist not because ambiguity is resolved, but because it must be lived with. His hybrid creatures become vehicles through which emotional landscapes emerge—worlds that defy conventional logic while revealing emotional and autobiographical truths that direct representation often struggles to reach. In evoking these timeless narrative structures, Shcherbak places his work within a broader conversation about journeying—not simply as physical movement, but as a a human need, a creative necessity and a spiritual condition. His protagonists move not towards answers, but towards a deeper ambiguity, or lack of understanding where beauty and absurdity meet in the same breath.
Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Shcherbak relocated to Paris to continue his studies at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, leaving behind not only his homeland, but family who remain there still. The shadow of that rupture arguably, perhaps inevitably, accompanies these paintings, yet The Planet of Giant Grasshoppers is remarkable not because it speaks of exile, but because it speaks of continuity. The imagined world that has accompanied the artist since childhood has endured, quietly absorbing lived experience without surrendering its essential character. Here, imagination is neither a refuge from reality nor its opposite. Instead, it becomes a means of carrying experience forward, preserving continuity even as life itself is continually transformed.
Joseph Clarke, 2026
“An event may be small and insignificant in its origin, and yet, when drawn close to one’s eye, it may open in its center an infinite and radiant perspective because a higher order of being is trying to express itself in it.”
BIOGRAPHY :
Oleksii Shcherbak is a Ukrainian-born, Paris-based artist creating poetic, otherworldly visions through painting and drawing. His practice is grounded in process-driven figuration with sentimental, mythic characters - cosmic exiles navigating strange emotional landscapes. His style rethinks traditional portraiture, exploring memory, nostalgia, and the surreal contradictions of time and identity.
Shcherbak graduated from L’école des Beaux-Arts in 2025, and holds degrees in easel painting and free graphics from National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (NAFAA), Kyiv. In 2025 Shcherbak opened a solo exhibition at the Corridor Foundation, Shenzhen, where he has previously featured in the group exhibitions Mystical Me (2025) and The Sphere of Reality and Fantasy (2024). Other recent solo exhibitions include Victims of Grenouilles, Rukh Art Hub & Mriya Gallery, Tribeca, New York (2024) and Oleksii Shcherbak, Test Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (2023). Selected group exhibitions include Animal at Anima Mundi (2025), Crash, at Ecole des Beaux-arts, group exhibition Paris (2023),Point of Time, ImagineArt gallery, Barcelona (2022), and Studio Iron at Saatchi Yates, London curated by Isamaya Ffrench (2026) among others. His works are held in numerous private collections internationally.