Scenes from a Nightmare, an exhibition by Pavel Otdelnov

“Scenes from a Nightmare” by Pavel Otdelnov

“Some of the exhibiting works are being shown for the first time, and all are intrinsically connected to my feelings of pain and horror at what is happening. War is the most terrifying and absurd thing imaginable.

The series The Field of Experiments, created in Sweden in early 2022, forms a key part of this exhibition. These watercolours emerged as a direct response to the invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities committed there. Depicting cold, desolate landscapes — concrete walls, ruined housing estates, abandoned television sets in the snow — these works are both studies for larger paintings and my immediate, personal record of a nightmare unfolding in real time.

The title of this series references the song Russian Fields of Experiments by the Soviet/Russian rock band GrOb (Civil Defense), written in 1988. In the song’s nightmarish lyrics, the Russian landscape becomes a testing ground for terrifying historical experiments. Today, that metaphor has become real.

These works exist in a space between memory and nightmare. The war feels unimaginable, yet its consequences are devastatingly real. Every morning, for a brief moment upon waking, there is the illusion of normality — before the horror rushes back. The works in this exhibition were created in 2022 and 2023 as my response to the tragic and catastrophic events of the war.”

About the artist
Pavel Otdelnov (b. 1979, Dzerzhinsk, USSR) is a London-based artist. He graduated from the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after Surikov and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Moscow. Since 1996, he has exhibited extensively in Russia, Sweden, the UK, and beyond. He was nominated for the Kandinsky Prize in 2015, 2017, and 2019 (Project of the Year), and became a finalist in 2021. He received a Special Award from the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Awards in 2017, and in 2020 was named both Artist of the Year by the Innovation Prize and by the Cosmoscow Foundation. His works are part of museum, corporate, and private collections, including the Uppsala Art Museum, Kalmar Art Museum (Sweden), the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Russia).
Otdelnov explores the intersections of memory, ideology, and the shifting landscapes of industrial and post-industrial spaces. His work traces the visual and material remnants of historical transformations, examining how narratives of power and propaganda shape collective perception. Through painting, installation, and other media, he reconstructs forgotten histories and reinterprets familiar imagery, opening a dialogue between personal experience and broader socio-political processes.
The exhibition is co-organised by the Oxford New Russian Society and Wolfson College.