While working on his most famous poem, Englishman John Milton was unlikely to predict its impact on contemporaries. "Paradise Lost" turned everything upside down when the biblical story about Adam and Eve's fall was interpreted as an act of human prometheism. Milton thought that the serpent's apple had transformed the human being from "a part of the nature" into the self-conscious personality whose aspiration for knowledge had been foreseen by the Creator himself.

It may seem that nostalgia for lost "naturalness" should have been exhausted - "divide and rule", as they say. However, the argument went on in literature, art and everyday life as if the theory lacked an element. Dualism, based on oppositions "nature-civilization", "Apollo-Dionysus", "conscious-subconscious", flourished for millennia. Philosophers argued whether history moves in a circle or along the straight line, and agreed on a spiral as the perfect form to reflect the historical process. Like dancing, mankind makes two steps forward and one back, over and over again, slowly moving towards desired Golden Age. The age which was left behind long time ago, as ancient Greeks and the Old Testament think, and ahead - according to communist postulates and formula of the capitalist progress.

Choosing one of the most complicated art techniques, Albina Yaloza interferes in philosophic paradigm and shows her own version of Lost Paradise that continues the tradition of bright and quality linocut started in her previous exposition Cult. This is combination of tenderness and confidence in what should be done with the soft substance of paper... Considering deepness of associations and perfection of depicted images, one may meditate upon these linocut landscapes for ever. However, forced stop gives its fruits. It seems that Lost Paradise controverts "innovations" of old Milton. When analyzed, the landscape is physically collapsing as if it shows emptiness of both external relative form of an image and an inner component that is supposed to symbolize contemporary's heavy grief for the true, not socially assumed nature. As you emerge from the parallel world of sunset and palm trees against the background of geometric figures, you realize that these graphic masterpieces aren't a return to the beginning, but a delusion multiplied by aesthetics of a graphic print. And this delusion goes beyond the bounds of its own definition and reflects qualitatively another reality - the mystery of existence.

Trees, reservoirs and fields of Lost Paradise don't appeal to nature that we daily see in dirty cities, but to the special sensation of its presence. It is existence "here and now" which open a door to the desired paradise; the existence which is identical to childhood that doesn't divide the world between black and white, good and bad... This existence is a solid stream of perception released from paralyzing self-analysis. The artist doesn't stop at nostalgia for nature and uses consciousness as a tool of art to return the capability to pure perception both for the creator and contemplator of results of this work. The world on these flat images vibrates while overflowing all imaginary bounds, multiplying and flooding space around as it reconciles Descartes's famous thesis cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) and less famous one - of Frenchman Andre Breton who proclaimed I am when I don't think in the first half of the XX century.

In free exhibition space and her own works Albina Yaloza collects things, skilfully and unconstrainedly concludes the theme and proves that not only can she observe, but also feel surrounding reality. Lost Paradise brings pieces of Milton's theory together and has the last word in the discussion between nature and consciousness. I am. And the world around me is too.

Olena Iegorushkina