On August 27, 2026, at 19:00, the personal exhibition "Sentimental Collection" by Oleg Pospelov will open at the La Recova Art Center (Sala L) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The project is organized with the support of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council and the Municipal Culture Department. The exposition brings together more than 120 works created between 2023 and 2026. The exhibition will run until September 27.

Artifacts of the past—pages from a 1950s touch-typing manual, mid-20th-century housekeeping magazines, and issues of the La Tarde newspaper from August 5, 1972—become the physical foundation for a new language. Historical media, already consigned to archives or scrap heaps, acquire new meaning. It is the palimpsest effect: the original text is not erased, but recedes into the depths, becoming the ground, the soil from which something new emerges. The names of those long gone do not vanish entirely. They remain embedded in the layers, in the fine typographic print, in the texture of the paper. We are not calling them back from oblivion—we are acknowledging that they never left. We simply stopped noticing them at some point.

About project

My daughter, when she was 6 or 7 years old, was building a very strange collection: scraps of paper, crumpled grocery store queue tickets, disposable gloves from the supermarket, cardboard popcorn cups from the cinema, napkins from cafes, stones from every trip to the beach that looked virtually identical, and leaves and sticks from every walk in the woods.

Along with dozens of other artifacts in the exact same vein. Throwing away what was—to an adult's eye—outright trash was strictly forbidden. Objects that seemed identical to anyone else were, to her, entirely unique and irreplaceable. Amusingly, at one point this impulse to preserve the utterly insignificant reached the level of absurdity: a suspicious odor began emanating from her bedroom. It turned out that uneaten bits of food had also been deemed worthy of memory—pie crumbs, a bitten apple that turned out not to be sweet, shriveled popcorn kernels. For this portion of the collection, we had to invent a different method of archiving: photographs. Soon, our phone galleries were filled with these strange still lifes.

My daughter’s collection—or rather, anti-collection—was simultaneously sentimental and severe. After all, what was being preserved were not traditional "keepsakes" whose weathered beauty might acquire nostalgic value over time, but items destined for oblivion: anonymous, useless, random. The kind of things that make up the vast majority of our world.

It is said that children at this age begin to grasp the finitude of existence—the impermanence of everything. Likely, this practice of holding onto the trivial was her way of fighting fear at that moment: the fear that everything you see will one day vanish forever. It is an essential stage of growing up that everyone must pass through—ideally coming to terms with the idea of mortality and discovering other values and meanings along the way. Back then, what I saw in her collection inspired both admiration and deep empathy. And of course, throughout life, we are forced to pass through such thresholds again and again. Personal crises are simply echoes and re-enactments of that initial encounter with our own limitations and our helplessness before the unfairness of how the world is built.

And over the past four years, events in the world have thrown me—and I know not just me, but many of us—back into that primal state of childhood helplessness in the face of absurdity, cruelty, and forces far greater than ourselves.

In a strange way, these painful experiences ultimately brought me back to my origins, to those early, "childlike" ways of coping—to creation. Because the only thing we can set against chaos and destruction is the act of creating. I began to paint as I did in childhood: without hesitation or self-reflection, for hours on end. Not painting anything specific, but simply painting—being, inhabiting the state of painting. Immersing myself in it.

Gradually, the range of tools and techniques expanded: collage, chemical experiments (another childhood passion!), exploring the interaction between paper, paint, and practically anything else. The main requirement was that a new meaning, a new story, had to emerge from this interaction.

Iodine, sumi ink, soap bubbles, glue, rust—random, dependent elements, much like the items in my daughter’s collection. On their own, they serve at best a simple function, their direct purpose far removed from art. Yet, as it turned out, searching for my own language led me precisely to them. Because, as it turns out, I still refuse to accept the idea of the finitude of existence if that acceptance implies resignation and accommodating oneself to the boundaries of what is possible. Because such resignation demands dividing all of existence into the important and the unimportant, the useful and the useless, the valuable and the trash. And that would be far too simple, wouldn't it?

It seems to me that everything matters—everything you remember, everything you feel, everything you notice, and everything you fail to notice. Especially what you fail to notice. Every single minute of time matters; it is beyond measure. We often speak of this with a kind of mechanical regret—after all, what can we really do? In the game against time, we are all bound to lose.

And yet, I want to believe that fighting is not the only way to exist. Assembling a new pattern from fragments of the past and the present, the real and the imagined—this is my way of expressing the incomprehensible complexity of this world, and capturing the beauty that makes this complexity bearable to carry.

Interactive installation: "Your Sentimental Collection"

Inside the exhibition space stand two type cases—wooden trays once used to hold lead type for printing books. Today, instead of letters, they house the components of an entirely different visual script. The first case contains my personal sentimental collection: everyday artifacts and quiet witnesses to my family’s history. Much like my daughter’s childhood "anti-collection," these objects carry no market value, yet they anchor what constantly slips away—memory. From these fragments of everyday life, the type of our shared fate is composed.

The second case is left for you. I invite you to become co-creators of the exhibition: assemble your own sentimental collection from personal everyday objects and share its story with your friends and fellow visitors. This second case serves as a medium of communication—it can be used in countless ways. For instance, arranging these keepsakes can become a proposal of marriage, a birthday wish, or an ask for forgiveness. It is not merely an autobiographical gesture, but a dialogue with someone who matters to you.

Format & Participation
Each session is structured as an intimate dialogue and a personal mini-exhibition. Afterward, the installation may be dismantled or left in the case for the next visitor, accompanied by your name on a display plaque. Prior registration is required to participate.

Note

If you choose to leave items in the case for display, please do not include valuable objects. The exhibition management assumes no responsibility for missing items; insurance applies strictly to the paintings.