Daria Dmytrenko: The Dreams I Don’t Remember | PM/AM
The Ukraine-born, Venice-based painter Daria Dmytrenko mashes up spiritual influences, producing work that’s both sacral and profane.
Some recent paintings are currently on show at PM/AM gallery in Fitzrovia, and one untitled work, on gold-leaf and board, stood out.
Untitled (2025)
Dmytrenko is influenced by Slavic mythology and childhood folk tales. She often portrays Bolotnik, spirit of the swamps and rivers, who’s covered in algae and scales. The figures are blurrily biomorphic, scaly, with eyes that also suggest cloacal holes.
What’s different about this work in particular is that it takes on the medium of the Christian icons, which I’m sure she saw a lot of back in Ukraine. There’s a few in Venice too.
Dmytrenko works via her meditative practice, the forms coming from her subconscious rather than from any earthly model. An organised religion, for example.
Accordingly, her iconic Bolotnik is all the more abstracted, all the more chillingly pagan, with his electric blue tendrils and eye, his nightmarish form drifting here and there, ragged as an Orthodox John the Baptist.
Viewed on a warm and sunny Saturday, I left his presence feeling like I’d dipped my toe in some icy water.
Daria Dmytrenko: The Dreams I Don’t Remember is at PM/AM (London) 18 July - 30 August 2025