Beyond the Surface
An Exhibition of Works by John Black
October 17 | 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Opening Reception:
– Live music: jazz pianist and bandoneonist set an elegant, warm, and colorful atmosphere.
– A reception featuring light and delightful hors d'oeuvres.
– Meet & greet: enjoy personal conversations with the Artist
October 18 | 1:00 PM – 8.00 PM
– 2:00 PM – 2:30 PM: An intimate tête-à-tête with the Artist over a glass of Prosecco.
– 3:00 PM, 6:30 PM: Guided exhibition tours with Julia Garamova.
– 8.00 PM: Closing of the exhibition.
Free admission
In the work of John Black, the act of painting transcends its conventional boundaries. His practice, rooted in classical training yet radically extended through the tools of contemporary innovation, transforms the image into an object, the canvas into an event. Each piece resists the passivity of mere representation, instead becoming a layered inquiry into perception, memory, and the fragile architecture of human experience.
Flowers — recurring protagonists in Black’s visual language — function not as decorative motifs but as vessels of universal meaning. Love, peace, mortality: themes that might appear familiar are here reconfigured, refracted through the symbolic charge of petals, stems, and blossoms. By embedding these classical forms within layers of transparent or colored acrylic, cut with words and fragments of light, Black redefines what it means to see, inviting viewers to not only look at but through the work.
The exhibition Beyond the Surface gathers works from across Black’s diverse series, tracing a path through his ongoing exploration of the thresholds between image and object, painting and sculpture, presence and absence. His signature interventions — laser engravings, layered plastics, optical dissonances — fracture the flatness of the canvas, producing works that shift with the viewer’s movement and the ambient light of the space.
To encounter John Black’s art is to enter a field of quiet radicalism. His works are meditations rather than spectacles, offering slowness in an age of acceleration. They ask for attention, for pause, for reflection — proposing that within the fragile form of a flower resides not only beauty, but the infinite depth of human truth.
Biography: John Black
John Black is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Silicon Valley. Originally from Russia, where he was recognized as an honorary member of the Union of Artists, Black carries within his practice a profound knowledge of classical painting traditions. These foundations, however, serve not as an endpoint but as a point of departure: a language to be reimagined and refracted through the materials, technologies, and sensibilities of the present.
His career bridges geographies and epochs. Having participated in both group and solo exhibitions across several countries, Black has continuously expanded the scope of his inquiry, moving beyond cultural borders to articulate a universal visual lexicon. The artist’s relocation to the United States marked a pivotal shift — a decisive rethinking of painting itself and the beginning of a new stage in his creative trajectory.
At the core of Black’s practice lies a sustained meditation on love, peace, and mortality — themes both timeless and urgent. Yet in his hands, these subjects are never treated literally; instead, they are refracted through the symbolic and philosophical resonance of flowers. The floral form, endlessly mutable and culturally charged, becomes his vessel for exploring the fragility of life, the possibility of harmony, and the inevitability of loss.
Through the integration of acrylic, laser-engraving, and layered optical surfaces, Black transforms painting into an event that unfolds between tradition and innovation, memory and immediacy. His work does not simply depict flowers; it proposes them as living metaphors — sites where beauty and thought, presence and absence, converge.
Email: ceo@ibuy.art
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