Gallery XL presents the exhibition by Igor Samolet “When Branches Turn into Sticks” In his project, the artist explores a special state of transformation: an elusive or obvious transition, when the living turns into the dead, the chthonic into the technical, and when something that was never a weapon or tool becomes one.

 According to Igor Samolet, in recent years he has been interested in simple symbols, images, and semantic contrasts that acquire new meanings in the context of an artistic work. Thus, the image of a pocket and what is hidden inside it, as well as an empty canvas contrasted with the force of a water current, become the main conceptual units of the “Slope Angle” project (XL Gallery, 2024). And ordinary barriers, designed to block access to a придомовая territory or a closed parking lot, turn into a metaphor for the multi‑option choice that opens up to a person every second of time (“Choice,” XL Gallery, 2025).

In Igor Samolet’s new project, the value of a symbolic object is embodied in a branch — long and straight, without any lateral branches, almost like a rod, a switch, or a whip. A sprout that, at the moment of being separated from a living tree, may change its qualities — and these will depend on whoever takes such a branch in their hands. The sense of transition is also linked to the material the works are made of — painted bronze that replicates the texture of a real tree branch. By becoming a model for a metal casting, the branch acquires the monumentality of a work of art and asserts its symbolic value. At the same time, its meaning remains not fully revealed, just like the content of the book blocks — another recurring element of this project. The viewer knows only that they contain some information deliberately hidden from their eyes. Thus, the meaning of the symbol, which is not reduced to a specific interpretation, can expand almost infinitely — just like the purpose that a shoot separated from the tree can acquire. He can become a tool or kindling for a fire, or he can be planted in the ground and sprout again, or he can rot in the fallen leaves, unnoticed by anyone. Here, another contrast emerges: “now” and “before,” and it is in the former that the variability lies that is no longer available in the latter.

Igor Samolet is a graduate of Syktyvkar State University (Graphic Design) and the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia named after A. Rodchenko (Project Photography). The artist’s solo exhibitions were held at the XL Gallery (“Choice,” 2025; “Angle of Inclination,” 2024), the SZENA Gallery (“Canon,” 2025), the Victoria Gallery (“Repressed Memories,” Samara, 2022), the Stella Art Foundation (“Everything We Remember,” 2021), the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art (“Steam,” 2012), and others. Author of the project “Architecture of Relationships” (Narkomfin House, 2024–2025), participant in the group exhibitions “Open Storage. Prologue” (2024–2025) at the GARAGE Museum and “Message” (2025) at the Ruarts Foundation.