The MaxArt Foundation for the Support and Development of Contemporary Art presents the group exhibition "Hidden Places," bringing together more than 30 Russian contemporary artists who work with images and metaphors that transcend the reality visible to the eye. The world they depict exists on a shifting, vibrating, translucent boundary between reality and the fictional world of artistic imagination, and it is not always possible to clearly draw or even mark this boundary. It is precisely here that a kind of "hidden place" emerges, where one can not only take refuge from the lens of reality but also discover hidden secrets and the imprints of phantoms.

In an attempt to define this "common ground" present in the work of an entire generation of contemporary artists, we turned to the term "metarealism," associated with a literary movement that emerged in Russia in the 1970s as a counterpoint to conceptualism. Metarealism did not deny reality, but significantly expanded it by incorporating the realm invisible to the eye, the world of metaphysical entities of being. In metarealism, the reality of our world, revealing its multidimensionality and complex composition, is structured upon an architecture of interpenetrating layers. It is not limited to the visible world of things and concepts, but extends far beyond its boundaries, touching upon various liminal realms associated with the psycho-emotional, spiritual, and mythological perception of existence. Interestingly, the "metarealism" movement did not find a formal expression in the visual arts at the time. At the same time, this term perfectly describes a set of specific traits characteristic of the work of a number of artists over the past decade.