In This Moment, A Second Lasts Forever

Kate Serebrianskaia presents her debut solo exhibition in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, the exhibition features Emma Eagle as co-curator, who has thoughtfully selected and arranged furniture, lighting, and objects to sit in dialogue with this new series of paintings, shaping a cohesive and immersive spatial experience.

Kate Serebrianskaia is a Siberian born emerging artist, based in Auckland. She graduated from UNITEC with a Master of Creative Practice in 2024, and also holds Postgraduate Diploma in Visual Art from the Novosibirsk State University (Russia) and attended the Summer Programme at St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. Serebrianskaia’s application of staining paint into (rather than onto) the canvas unifies the materials and surfaces of her images, mediating a balance between process, intention and intuition. Working at scale and taking colour and form as her subjects, Serebrianskaia’s fields of colour bleed and fray into one another, disrupting the flatness of the painting’s plane giving the illusion of depth, volume and illumination. Her iridescent surfaces are optically charged and seductive, challenging our perception of space and movement. Kate’s soak-stain approach of spilling, staining, tinting, creates floating fields of translucent colour which the explore the interplay of physical and metaphysical realms, reflecting on presence, essence and absence.

Curator Notes by Emma Eagle

"It has been an honour to have been invited to curate Kate Serebrianskaia’s first exhibition with Elle Föenander."

Together, we have shaped a space that invites viewers to encounter her work through a considered selection of objects from Good Form – pieces that respond to her concepts, scale, and chromatic language. We embraced contrast as a curatorial gesture, drawing attention to unexpected duotones and subtle tensions. Vintage and contemporary design pieces from Good Form sit in quiet dialogue throughout the gallery, creating an intuitive, three-dimensional journey that moves between artwork and object with ease.

Across the space, spectrums unfold – of paint, of material, of tone. As we developed the exhibition, we found ourselves searching for ways to articulate the experience of the works: how to describe colour that feels immersive, how to give language to surface, depth, and subtle changes. Spending time with Kate’s paintings prompted a reflection on how words, too, might create a spectrum – how language could echo the same shifts, bleeds, and transitions found within her canvases.

Subtle – Subdued

Meditative – Monotone

Raw – Radiant

Disciplined – Deliberate

Minimal – Measured

Subtle – Serene

Compose – Controlled

Stable – Supple

Duotone – Devotion

Luminous – Lyrical

Present – Punctuated

Textured – Tempered