ksenia dermenzhi
Ksenia Dermenzhi’s practice develops through the slow construction and dissolution of the image, where painting is concerned with emergence rather than resolution, and forms remain in a state of continual becoming. Closely connected to ideas of birth and creation, her work explores how form remains contingent on its environment, existing in a state of instability and continual transformation. Within this condition, she examines uncertainty, temporality, and the cyclical movement of time.
Working with liquid and semi-transparent oil paint and, often, oil pastel, Dermenzhi builds and disrupts pictorial space through layering, dilution, pouring, staining, and removal. The surface records a continuous negotiation between transparency, absorption, viscosity and resistance.
Central to the work is a tension between containment and dispersion. Forms appear suspended within the pictorial field while simultaneously exceeding its boundaries, dissolving into surrounding colour and ground. Colour functions not as description, but as a generative force through which images gather, shift, and recede - at times operating like a concentrated field of energy in continuous flux.
Each painting exists in a state of dialogue between intuition and decision, between uncertainty and resolution, up until the moment it is named.
Ksenia Dermenzhi (b. 1995, Moldova). Lives and works in London.
Education:
Current: MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London (2025-2026)
BA Painting, Academy of Music Theatre and Fine Arts, Chisinau (2015-2019)
Painting, College of Fine Arts Plamadeala, Chisinau (2011-2015)
Solo exhibitions:
Invisible Paths, BEERS London, London (2024)
In Bloom, BEERS London, London (2022)
Selected Group exhibitions:
Arcadia and Elsewhere, James Cohan Gallery, New York (2024)
Landscape Reimagined, Saatchi Gallery, London (2024)
Family & Friends, BEERS London, London (2023)
BFAMI, Phillips, London (2022)
The New, Artual Gallery, Beirut (2021)
ArtCor Creative Hub, Chisinau (2019)
The Creative youth, Constantin Brancusi Exposition Center, Chisinau, (2018)
Art Fairs :
ENTER Art Fair, Solo booth BEERS London, Copenhagen (2023)
KIAF Seoul, Suomei Gallery, Seoul (2023)
West Bund Art & Design, Shanghai (2023)
UVNT 24 Art Fair, Cerquone Gallery, Madrid (2024)