Oleksii Shcherbak 'The Planet of Giant Grasshoppers'

O L E K S I I S H C H E R B A K
O L E K S I I S H C H E R B A K T H E P L A N E T O F G I A N T G R A S S H O P P E R S

T H E P L
A N E T O F G I A N T G R A S S H O P P E R S

Anima Mundi is delighted to present
The Planet of Giant Grasshoppers, the
inaugural solo exhibition of Ukrainian
artist Oleksii Shcherbak at the gallery.
Autobiography is often understood as an
act of faithful recollection, yet Shcherbak
proposes something more ambiguous. For
him, the deepest truths are not recovered
through documentation or description, but
through invention. Since childhood, he has
returned to an imagined world populated
by improbable creatures, unfamiliar
figures and mutable landscapes, finding
within the imaginary a language capable of
expressing experiences that realism alone
cannot contain. Rather than offering an
escape from reality, perhaps this invented
world reveals a deeper autobiographical
truth; one in which memory, longing, fear
and revelation are not merely remembered,
but reimagined.
Shcherbak’s figures are often distorted,
but never grotesque. They possess an
unmistakable vulnerability and deep
humanity, encountering grace through
instability. Seeking beauty within conflict
or disturbance becomes a continual
balancing act - echoing something
fundamental about the human condition:
that certainty remains elusive, and meaning
is rarely fixed. Like Beckett’s protagonists
who “...must go on...can’t go on… go
on” or Kafka’s characters who inhabit
realities whose logic forever eludes them,
Shcherbak’s characters persist not because
ambiguity is resolved, but because it must
be lived with. His hybrid creatures become
vehicles through which emotional
landscapes emerge—worlds that defy
conventional logic while revealing
emotional and autobiographical truths that
direct representation often struggles to
reach. In evoking these timeless narrative
structures, Shcherbak places his work within
a broader conversation about journeying—
not simply as physical movement, but as
a a human need, a creative necessity and
a spiritual condition. His protagonists
move not towards answers, but towards a
deeper ambiguity, or lack of understanding
where beauty and absurdity meet in the
same breath.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of
Ukraine, Shcherbak relocated to Paris to
continue his studies at the prestigious
École des Beaux-Arts, leaving behind not
only his homeland, but family who remain
there still. The shadow of that rupture
arguably, perhaps inevitably, accompanies
these paintings, yet The Planet of Giant
Grasshoppers is remarkable not because
it speaks of exile, but because it speaks of
continuity. The imagined world that has
accompanied the artist since childhood
has endured, quietly absorbing lived
experience without surrendering its
essential character. Here, imagination
is neither a refuge from reality nor
its opposite. Instead, it becomes a
means of carrying experience forward,
preserving continuity even as life itself is
continually transformed.
Joseph Clarke, 2026
Flying on a Dragon
oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm
2
3

Patrick is Changing
oil on canvas, 140 x 150 cm
4 5

Vessel
oil on canvas, 167 x 240 cm
6 7

Elusive Jack
oil on canvas, 150 x 123 cm
8 9

Jean Near the Lake
oil on canvas, 65 x 46 cm
10 11

Around the turn of the millennium, in
a town rebuilt through labour and a
pragmatic desire for conformity, liberated
from its former structure and suppressive
order yet carrying traces of it in every
detail, time was devoted to those essential
things such as subsistence and vanishing.
On the bar of a metal construction firmly
drilled into the ground, predictably
intended for carpet cleaning rather than
flying, two little ones of a freer generation,
astonished by the sadness of the one
before them, sat for hours.
We’re in the game now.
The spaceship followed the trajectory of
a row of panel houses, trying not to lose
its course and to keep the expedition safe.
The two boys did not yet know that the
planet they were about to reach belonged
to giant grasshoppers. It became clear that
the universe had no limits, and the farther
you travelled, the more there was to
discover. You only hoped not to get thirsty,
because that would mean returning home
for water, and there were many reasons an
expedition could be interrupted.
A fabulous landscape kept unfolding as
imagined heroes replaced the absent ones.
By revisiting the storylines of the worlds
he invented with a childhood friend,
Oleksii treats fiction as a tool for
navigating experience.
Turning to drawings of characters and
maps created back then, the artist reworks
a personal system of signs through
which reality and invention gradually
become inseparable.
Returning to the fearless logic of childhood,
Oleksii continues to work with memory as
a central element of his practice. Invented
mythologies become a means of seeking
connections and moments of balance amid
contradictions of lived reality.
Valeriia Vertii, 2026
Standing Man Behind the Hill
oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm
12
13

Todd and The Window
oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm
14 15

Frozen
oil & marker pen on canvas, 65 x 50 cm
16 17

Seesaw
oil & mixed media on canvas, 140 x 300 cm
18
19

Pencil-Man
oil on canvas, 69 x 57 cm
20 21

Fish-Man
oil & mixed media on canvas, 57 x 64 cm
22 23

Inactivated
mixed media on paper, 21 x 30 cm
24 25

Chronicles
mixed media on paper, 38 x 76 cm
26 27

Untitled
mixed media on paper, 21 x 30 cm
28 29

King
two sided work, mixed media on paper, 21 x 30 cm
30
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BIOGRAPHY
Oleksii Shcherbak is a Ukrainian-born, Paris-based artist
creating poetic, otherworldly visions through painting
and drawing. His practice is grounded in processdriven
figuration with sentimental, mythic characters
- cosmic exiles navigating strange emotional landscapes.
His style rethinks traditional portraiture, exploring
memory, nostalgia, and the surreal contradictions of time
and identity.
Shcherbak graduated from L’école des Beaux-Arts
in 2025, and holds degrees in easel painting and
free graphics from National Academy of Fine Arts
and Architecture (NAFAA), Kyiv. In 2025 Shcherbak
opened a solo exhibition at the Corridor Foundation,
Shenzhen, where he has previously featured in the
group exhibitions Mystical Me (2025) and The Sphere of
Reality and Fantasy (2024). Other recent solo exhibitions
include Victims of Grenouilles, Rukh Art Hub & Mriya
Gallery, Tribeca, New York (2024) and Oleksii Shcherbak,
Test Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (2023). Selected group
exhibitions include Animal at Anima Mundi (2025),
Crash, at Ecole des Beaux-arts, group exhibition Paris
(2023),Point of Time, ImagineArt gallery, Barcelona
(2022), and Studio Iron at Saatchi Yates, London curated
by Isamaya Ffrench (2026) among others. His works are
held in numerous private collections internationally.
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Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with Oleksii Shcherbak ‘The Planet of Giant Grasshoppers’
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