Syntax Gallery is glad to announce a new solo show by Evgeny Granilshchikov. The exhibition features a new series of watercolors. «We lit up even brighter that night» is a modified phrase taken from a speech of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in connection with the spontaneous demonstrations and protests against the rigged presidential election that broke out in August 2020.

In his new work, artist Jenia Granilshchikov portrays human figures, deliberately taken out of context, and draws the viewer's attention to their explicit plasticity. This plasticity hints at the themes of vulnerability and instability, but most importantly, it resonates with the way traditional media have been depicting the human figure for centuries. Granilshchikov cites 19th-century German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, who often portrayed his characters from the back, as the central reference and inspiration for this work. While in Caspar David Friedrich's paintings the landscape reflects the protagonist's inner state, in Granilshchikov's work the negative space of white paper surrounding the characters becomes a metaphor for an invisible threat and hidden political pressure.

One of the central themes of the project is the solitary picket, which is the only legal form of protest in Russia. Nevertheless, people can still be persecuted or detained for several days for expressing their political beliefs in this manner.