Valery Koshlyakov’s large-scale cardboard paintings, collages and installations – sometimes hanging from the ceiling, sometimes made out of sticky tape placed
directly onto the gallery walls – irreverently engage with ideas of empire.

Covered in paint drips, his flattened-box panels are blown-up postcard images of state-approved classical and monumental European architecture that have more in common with street art than with photorealistic obedience. They look wet, urgent, quickly rendered, and they show his iconic subjects, from a Soviet stadium to a gothic cathedral, as a madman’s fantasy.