Paris’s 3rd arrondissement is one of those rare urban neighborhoods where old and new coexist seamlessly. Narrow streets, stone facades, studios, and galleries behind wooden doors. It was here, at 32 rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, that The Holy Art gallery opened its doors for the international group exhibition “Paris Exhibition: OPEN ART & AOL,” bringing together artists from around the world under the title “Metamorphoses.”
The Holy Art is an international gallery and exhibition platform that has consistently built a community of contemporary artists worldwide for many years. It works with artists at various stages of their careers, creating opportunities for them to be present in a significant international context—be it London, New York, or, as in this case, Paris. Alexandra Uryasova presented works from her “Inside the Studio” series (2024–2025) at the exhibition—a project she developed over the course of two years, which has now acquired its own voice and recognizable artistic language.
The idea behind the series is simple yet radical: to make the studio—not the result of the work, but the process itself—the primary subject of the painting. Not finished canvases on the white walls of a gallery, but unfinished works on an easel, scattered brushes, traces of paint on the floor, an open door beyond which another world begins.
Alexandra invites the viewer to enter a place typically inaccessible—that fragile and almost sacred space where art has not yet become a result, but is only just becoming one. In the context of the exhibition titled “Metamorphoses,” this idea resonated particularly well. Because the studio is the place where metamorphosis occurs every day.
Two works from the series were featured in the exhibition and the physical catalog.
«Entrance of Art» — acrylic, mixed media,
100×100 см, 2024.
The canvas stands by the open door: already finished, already ready, but not yet set foot over the threshold. The doorway here is not an architectural detail, but a symbol: the boundary between the intimate and the public, between the protected and the vulnerable. The electrical outlets on the wall, the floor tiles, the occasional electrical wire—a harsh, recognizable reality grounds this almost metaphysical moment. No one knows what will happen next. Whose gaze will linger. What will awaken. And it is precisely this uncertainty that constitutes the true life of the painting.
Exhibiting this work in the context of Metamorphoses turned out to be a particularly apt decision: the very act of the painting’s emergence into the world is already a metamorphosis. Already a crossing of that very point of no return.
If “Entrance of Art” is the threshold, then “In Expectation” is the silence that follows.
«In Expectation» — acrylic, acrylic markers, mixed media,
70×100 см, 2025.
The work is finished. The paintings—different, each with its own story—simply stand, leaning against one another. Flowers against a dark background, a blue ornament, a red silhouette, a yellow one with pink streaks. All different, all finished—and all equally vulnerable in this anticipation. The paint-stained floor is a silent witness to all that was created here. Their fate is not yet decided. And the viewer finds them precisely at this moment—between birth and destiny, between the studio and the world.
Both works are included in the exhibition’s physical catalogue – a printed publication
documenting all the participants in the project.
A catalogue is more than just a booklet. It’s a form of documentation: evidence that the work existed in this space, at this time, alongside these people. Over the years, it’s precisely these documents that become part of an artist’s biography.
Participation in the exhibition is confirmed by an official certificate.
The Holy Art Gallery
