Dichotomy is an exploration of a world where the extraordinary has become the background condition. Pandemic, wars, ideological fractures, digital hyperreality, ecological anxiety – these events do not replace one another but accumulate, forming a dense and traumatic temporality. Within this logic, the series functions as an analytical model of the XXI century.

The Dichotomy series begins with the work “The Raft of Medusa 2”, and this very gesture establishes the conceptual vector of the entire collection. Referring to an image historically associated with Théodore Géricault, Yessenbayev transfers tragedy from the perception of a singular event into a state of permanence. The number “2” is crucial here: catastrophe is no longer an exception but a recurring structure of contemporary reality.

The artist works not with the depiction of an event but rather with its structure. The titles – “15 Million”, “2 + 2”, “Article 15”, “468”, “UN Goal-2” – introduce the language of statistics, law, and international bureaucracy into artistic space. Particularly significant is 15 Million, referencing the number of victims of the recent pandemic. Here, the number becomes a form of loss without a face. Death turns into a graph; tragedy becomes data. This shift resonates with the biopolitical optics described by Michel Foucault: the governance of life through calculation and normalization. Yet, Yessenbayev does not illustrate a theory; he exposes a form of cultural anesthesia emerging under conditions of digital representation. Numbers scale the tragedy to the point where it becomes impossible to experience it emotionally.

In “Very Black Square”, “Sacred Symmetry”, and “Geometry of Destruction”, a polemic with the modernist legacy unfolds. The dialogue with Kazimir Malevich is not a matter of quotation. If modernism sought a zero point of form and believed in the purifying power of abstraction, Yessenbayev records the exhaustion of that belief. Symmetry, geometry, and blackness – no longer guarantee order; they become metaphors of fragile, sometimes illusory equilibrium.

Another layer of the series engages with the language of power and ideology. “Article 15”, “Exhibit of Union-level Significance”, “Pyrrhic Victory!”, and “Extreme Measure” address normativity – the way formulation itself structures reality. The arithmetic reference in “2 + 2" inevitably recalls George Orwell’s vision, where even basic truths become objects of political control. In cultural memory, the formula “two plus two equals four” has long symbolized the last bastion of rationality – the limit of self-evidence. In the novel 1984, this formula becomes a political instrument: if power can dictate what 2+2 equals, then the very structure of thought comes under control.

At the same time, a line of inquiry into digital identity develops through works such as “Selfie”, “Wrong Place, Wrong Time”, and “Zombie Carnival”. Here the subject appears split between presence and simulation. In the spirit of Jean Baudrillard’s reflections, the image begins to substitute reality itself. Identity exists as a reproduced and consumed representation.

The medium itself carries particular significance. All works are executed with ink on a silk (silk satin, to be precise). Silk is historically a material of transit, trade, and cultural exchange; in the context of Central Asia, it bears the memory of the Silk Road. In artist’s practice this surface is vulnerable, mobile, and sensitive to the slightest intervention. History is not carved in stone – it is applied to fabric. Ink may spread; memory may distort. The nearly square, unified format of most works produces a sense of system and archive. What confronts the viewer is not an expressive series but a visual structure – a catalogue of the symptoms of an era, reminiscent of an Instagram feed. In this sense, Dichotomy is not a narrative but a field of tensions: between number and body, order and destruction, symmetry and chaos, ideology and personal choice.

The artist’s critical perspective does not reduce itself to exposing human flaws or historical catastrophes. His position is more complex: he investigates the conditions of their emergence – mechanisms of simplification, normalization, and depersonalization. Catastrophe in his works is not inherently fatal; it grows from accumulated decisions, repeated formulas, and the consent to reduce complexity to convenience.

Thus, Dichotomydoes not propose a moralizing gesture; it creates a space for reflection. Within this space, the viewer confronts not only a critique of the present time but also their own participation in its structures. The fragility of silk recalls the fragility of human consciousness – and simultaneously its capacity for attention. The series records the condition of the world without closing itself within pessimism. At its core lies the conviction that history is formed through a choice, even if minimal and internal – not declarative or slogan-driven, but ethical, expressed in the way one thinks, interprets, agrees, or resists.

Dichotomy is an intellectually constructed and conceptually precise statement on contemporaneity, in which art functions not as an illustration of events but as an instrument for their critical understanding.

Togzhan Sakbayeva, art curator.

The exhibition presents 30 new artworks by Orazbek Yessenbayev created in 2025, executed in the artist’s distinctive and recognizable technique – ink pen on satin. Fine linear strokes, condensing and dispersing, form complex square-format graphic constructions where intense emotional tensions unfold through the contrast between the white fabric surface and the intricate choreography of black lines.

Within the global opposition of light and darkness, black and white, good and evil, falsehood and truth, dichotomy emerges as a sequential division into two inseparably connected parts. The paradox of an attraction and a repulsion manifests not only in the conceptual juxtaposition of opposing phenomena, but also in the visual contrast between black lines and the white textile surface, generating profound philosophical statements about the human condition and the world.

Gutta-percha-like anthropomorphic figures with elongated, flexible limbs coexist in a strange harmony with zoomorphic and monster-like characters. This unusual proximity exposes aspects of reality observed by both artist and viewer as if through a barred window. In documenting sequences of past and present events, Yessenbayev maintains a deliberately distanced perspective, creating an artistic archive of historical phenomena – wars, catastrophes, genocide, ecological disasters, and their destructive and irreversible consequences for both society and the individual. The artist’s personal response to these events transforms into a warning intended to prevent their recurrence in the future.

In his own creative interpretation, the artist addresses shocking traditions rooted in the Middle Ages that persist in certain regions even today: bacha bazi performers entertaining patrons, a nine-year-old bride in a neke marriage ritual with an elderly man, and enslaved figures bound in chains whose patterned faces gradually lose individual identity.

The irreversibility of genocide – the destruction of the fundamental value of human life – appears in multiple historical scales within the artist’s interpretation: the Inquisition, capital punishment, nuclear testing, terrorist acts, and war crimes. Each artistic statement becomes a humanistic and pacifist manifesto.

Sharpening his critical lens, Yessenbayev also closely examines private human life, unafraid to reveal its unsettling aspects. The tragedy of the “little person” acquires, in the artist’s interpretation, a large-scale destructive dimension – both emotional and physical.

Finally, the “strangenesses” of contemporary life captured by the artist – from the emergence of new subcultures such as quadrobics enthusiasts to references to twentieth-century experimental art and reflections on its cultural and material value – function as warnings about the potential total degradation of society.

This artistic inquiry traces a movement from the particular to the universal, where individual phenomena assume systemic character and become part of human civilization. By turning to tragic moments in history, the artist affirms the permanence of eternal values that define the luminous nature of humanity, offering hope for spiritual renewal while preserving the individual’s right to choose their own path and determine personal priorities.

The artist is distinguished by consistency – in his choice of an unconventional technique, in the articulation of a clear personal position, and in his commitment to the gradual unfolding of themes through multi-part series. The expression of his worldview, engagement with universal human values, originality of artistic thinking, and an existential necessity for creative practice place Orazbek Yessenbayev among significant masters not only within a local context but also within the global contemporary art landscape.

Ekaterina Reznikova, PhD in Art History