Ludmila Gorbunova (b. 1971) is a contemporary artist living and working in Saint Petersburg. She is a member of the Professional Union of Artists of Russia and a winner and prizewinner of several Russian and international competitions.
Since 2021 she has been active in exhibitions: more than 30 exhibition projects and art fairs across Russia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, including Art Moscow, a show at the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art (Saint Petersburg), ArtAnkara, ArtNouva Fair, ArtContact Istanbul (Turkey), Design Shanghai (China), an exhibition at the Lalit Kala Akademi (National Academy of Art, India), and the “Traditions and Contemporary Art” and “The Sea Within” art festivals, as well as the “Russian House” interior exhibition.
Artist Statement
In my painting I explore how inner harmony is reassembled — when the old supports have vanished and new ones must be built from the fragments. My practice unfolds in the field of metamodern oscillation: after irony, yet before naivety; after collapse, yet before a new wholeness. This is not a return to what was, but a conscious reconstruction of meaning that keeps the memory of the cracks.
The series Illusion of the Whole became the core of this practice. The inner picture of the world is never a single, seamless narrative; it lives in fragments — feelings, emotions, memories, experience. The visual language of the series is stained glass: light breaks through the arched windows, and from the scattered cells a single pattern emerges — the very thing the self is assembled from. Here light does not merely illuminate; it connects and gives meaning.
Light in my work is not a subject but a medium, one you enter from within. It works across different spaces: refracting through the depth of water, where shore and horizon dissolve; rising from the depths of an inner cosmos, becoming a road between past and future. When the familiar landmarks are removed, it is light that guides the gaze — the viewer’s and the artist’s own. My paintings invite a meditative immersion: to pause, to slow down, to hear what sounds within.
I work in oil and mixed media, building the image in layers — from transparent glazes to thick impasto strokes. What matters to me is conveying a state; the border between the abstract and the recognizable is left deliberately fluid.
The practice unfolds across three interconnected series — Illusion of the Whole, The Sea Within, and Light of a Distant Star — where light works as a universal language for assembling the inner world across different mediums: stained glass, water, and inner space.
My works offer no answers. They create a space where the viewer can pause, hear their inner resonance and — through accepting their own fragmentation — arrive at a new, fragile harmony.