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# At the Engineering Building of the Tretyakov Gallery: an exhibition of the remarkable Russian artist Alexander Ponomarev, "I Am Mad Only at North-North-West", gathering models of his world-famous works from Venice and Paris, Egypt and Japan, Moscow and…
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-inzhenernom-korpuse-tretiakovki-vystavka-potriasaiushchego-russkogo-khudozhnika-aleksandra-ponomareva-ia-bezumen-tolko-v-nord-nord-vest-na-kotoroi-sobrany-makety-ego-vsemirno-izvestny/
- Published: 2024-02-03T11:02:58.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:34:40.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Moscow, Museums, Paris

The exhibition is intimate, yet Ponomarev does not feel cramped in this modest space: his spirit lives in the open expanse of the world's elements and takes form in works whose driving forces are the surface of the sea and the canopy of the sky, the might of waves and the gust of wind. These are works that make one raise one's head and listen, see mechanism in the natural and feel the organic in the dynamism of machines. Ponomarev, formerly a sailor who crossed the oceans, sets the enormous propellers of decommissioned ships vibrating once more, now from the motion of the air; he mounts the almost bodiless skeletons of ancient Japanese boats on colossal mirrors right on the seashore; he finds the sea's element in the noise of the Moroccan desert; he turns the city waters of European capitals into a portal to the world ocean; and he shows how the forces of nature are interwoven in the movement of the living and the lifeless, giving birth to art.

In our age, when contemporary art is so thoroughly overrun by monotonous, feeble, mediocre scribbles, it is immensely inspiring to see creators of Ponomarev's calibre, who work with form and colour, with movement and image, with volume and environment, with metal, stone, glass, wood, fabric, complex mechanisms and constructions of their own invention and, of course, with natural phenomena.

Among the projects presented at the exhibition are Ponomarev's works from biennales and triennales, which in their time became sensations. A submarine that surfaced in the canals of Venice, and another that showed itself in the fountain of the Tuileries Garden opposite the Louvre; the steel skeletons of ships transformed into an eternally revolving ouroboros right by the Great Pyramids; wind vanes on the colonnade of the Pushkin Museum; and many other incredible, living, original installations.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_11084@03-02-2024_14-02-58.jpg)