Untitled (Swallow incised the sky), 2015

A few years ago, Alexandra Sukhareva set up her studio in the town of Dubna, around a hundred kilometres north of Moscow, where an major international nuclear research centre is based. Driven in part by the prestige of the scientific studies linked to the place, the artist in the meantime set up her own personal experimentation with toxic materials and substances, testing the corrosive capacities of liquids in combination with a range of supports. After producing a series of works on canvas making use of chlorine to stain and burn the surface, Sukhareva moved on to work with glass and mirrors, to which she applied formulae dating back to the eighteenth century, identified in a Soviet chemistry manual from the 1940s. [...]