The Supra-cultural Absolute or the sensual exploration of time

curator Alexander Korytov

Winzavod Contepporary Art Center, entrance h8

Opening on October 21, 2025

21.10 — 05.12.2025

On October 21, Mikhail Krunov's personal exhibition "The Supra—cultural Absolute or the Sensual Exploration of Time" opened at the a—s—t—r-a Gallery.

Mikhail Krunov's exhibition at the a—s—t—r—a Gallery is a movement, a journey through macro and microcosms, where science, philosophy and art merge into a single research method. The artist belongs to a rare tradition of science art, where aesthetics is associated with a scientific, intellectual program. He sees his task as romanticizing and promoting scientific achievements describing the universe.

Mikhail works with the ideas of Russian cosmism by Nikolai Fedorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Vladimir Vernadsky. The central narrative of the exhibition is the idea of the super—causality of the universe. "Tsiolkovsky considered God and science as interrelated concepts that do not contradict each other. For me, this is not an aesthetic and artistic work — it is a Path, a spiritual practice, a supra—cultural Absolute," says the artist.

The first hall features paintings visualizing the processes of nuclear reactions during star formation. The artist chooses the theory of infinity and the mathematical model of a set by Georg Kantor (1882) as the basis for visualization. Kant's set describes the hierarchical organization of natural systems: human genera (according to Fedorov) and demographic populations, circulatory systems, the structure of DNA and neural networks. Canvases of paintings created using the technique of classical multilayer oil painting are constructed according to the nuclear fission scheme.

In the second hall, a project of new atomic forms of matter organization with unique properties is presented. The artist refers to the geometric mosaic by Roger Penrose, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020 (discovered in 1978). We are talking about quasi-crystals created synthesized on Earth (1982), in the internal atomic organization of which order and chaos coexist simultaneously. Quasicrystals have generated a number of amazing inventions in the materials science of the future and have been a creative source for the structure of works.

The third project is dedicated to modern cosmology and multiverse hypotheses by astrophysicist John Rees. The scientist recognized, even indirectly, that there is a mind incomparably more powerful than a human mind. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote that “life in the universe is eternal and endless, it develops in infinitely diverse forms on countless worlds.” The artist depicts multiverses in the form of atomic lattices, arranged according to the principle of weaving fabric or radial Cantor arrays. 

The supra-cultural Absolute binds the atomic, the social, and the cosmic into a single system. A person in this system is located in the center between the micro and macro worlds. This idea is expressed in minimalist landscapes with landscape structures of our planet and dedication to scientists.

The exhibition offers the viewer not passive observation, but immersion in the process of comprehending the structure of the universe — from the atom to cosmic star nebulae, and from science to the Absolute.