Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko – La generazione felice
Comunicato stampa
Ncontemporary is pleased to present “La generazione felice (The happy generation)”, a solo exhibition by Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko (Kharkiv, 1998). Held at the gallery in Milan, the exhibition represents the second chapter of a journey initiated in 2024 at Ncontemporary Venice with the exhibition “Butterfly Hunt”.
Strelyaev-Nazarko’s practice is shaped by the obliquely political context of his upbringing, echoing the chimerical narratives and visual languages inherited from the Soviet era. He mixes pigments on canvas the way the great masters of European painting once did, mastering a precious and ancient medium. And yet that very medium—so noble and demanding—is used to immortalize hanging socks, underwear, haphazardly worn clothes, figures that seem to emerge from an improvised disguise.
La generazione felice inhabits this tension between tenderness and disillusionment. It is not nostalgia, but something more elusive: the feeling of having dreamed something beautiful and no longer remembering exactly what it was — only retaining the sense that it existed, and that it mattered. It is the pleasant exhaustion that follows an afternoon of play, when you do not want to stop but your body has already decided for you. It is discovering that the adult world bears little resemblance to the one imagined in childhood. It is understanding that no generation can escape history, and that the awareness of how fragile happiness is, is what ultimately binds us together.
Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko is a Ukrainian artist who lives and works in Milan. After graduating in Industrial Design in his hometown, Strelyaev-Nazarko moved to Italy. He later earned a Master’s degree in Visual Arts at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan, and is currently completing a Master’s degree in Painting at Accademia di Brera. The artist’s first solo exhibition was held at Marsèll Paradise in Milan in 2023, accompanied by a text by Vittoria De Franchis. In 2024, he began his collaboration with Ncontemporary through a solo exhibition in Venice, followed by exhibitions across Italy and France. In March 2026, the works Untitled (2023) and Paramnesia (2023) were featured in Louis Vuitton’s Autumn/Winter 2026 collection designed by Nicolas Ghesquière.
