The exhibition “Defamiliarization” is an exhibition in which the introspective impulse and psychoanalysis meet the expressive, painterly element. The name itself (a term coined by Viktor Shklovsky, meaning a technique that makes the familiar unfamiliar) provides the key: Vera Gvildis does not merely depict something or in some way; she attempts to recode the inner world, bringing the unconscious to the surface.

According to the author, the very essence of her painterly approach has a Jungian foundation. The works mostly have nominalistic or ironic titles, but they are also rich in archetypal images — mandalas, shadows, anima/animus, and symbols of the collective unconscious. This was done intuitively, but the abstraction here is not chaos, but a map of the psyche, where color and form become not the language of illustrated dreams, but a pictorial search and plastic brutality.

Vera Gvildis’s debut exhibition at the Fine Art gallery can transform the space into a laboratory of nuances and subtleties of self‑knowledge, where Fauvism is responsible for the vibration of feelings, expressionism for the primordial energy, and the author’s internal references to Jung for the structure of chaos. This is not an exhibition for passive contemplation, but an invitation to a psychoanalytic session: you look at the canvas, but in fact you are looking into yourself.
Defamiliarization is not a state, it is a skill. This is the ability to redirect your mental projector from the dirt of news, from what is insignificant and fleeting, to something greater and more important.

About the artist
By first education, Vera Gvildis is a stylist; she graduated from the Dolores Academy. Later, she received an art education, completing courses at the Moscow State Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov under the “Painting and Graphics” program. Currently, she is a member of the Creative Union of Artists of Russia (TSKhR) and the creative association of professional artists “ART Nisha”. The artist actively participates in exhibitions in Moscow and other cities across Russia, and her works are held in private collections in Russia and abroad.