Ncontemporary

La generazione felice
Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko
Until 5 September
Ncontemporary Milan

There’s a certain irony in calling a generation “happy.” And yet that’s exactly what people did in post-Soviet Eastern Europe with those born at the end of that era, after 1991: happy, because they had escaped the collapse, the crisis, the darkness of uncertainty that came with an era ending. It was said with relief, almost like a blessing, tinged with a hint of envy. And yet history, as it so often does, repeated itself, and that “happy” generation once again found itself at the center of conflict, of worldwide narration, of something once thought unimaginable.

La generazione felice (The happy generation) is Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko’s second solo exhibition at Ncontemporary, continuing the path first initiated with Butterfly Hunt at the gallery’s space in Venice. The Ukrainian artist, who has lived in Milan for many years, pursues a painterly practice rooted in childhood memory and in its inevitably imperfect layering: not the sharpness of recollection, but what remains of it — a light, a gesture, the feeling of an afternoon that seemed as though it would never end. Strelyaev-Nazarko 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. The distance between the medium and the subject is not a provocation, but one of the most fertile tensions in his work: as though history painting had decided, for once, to tell the story of the ordinary. The game remains at the center of the entire project.

In the Forts series, three canvases that together construct a small domestic epic, we see the adult artist building fragile architectures out of cushions, chairs, sheets, and blankets, much like we all did as children when we transformed the living room into a territory to explore and defend. In Fort n. 1, a figure crawls beneath the structure, determined, still fully immersed in the game. In Fort n. 2, the construction reaches its peak: a strainer turned into a helmet, socks hanging like banners. It is an epic both comic and tender, unfolding before an open sky and a boundless landscape, as though the walls of an apartment could contain an entire world. But in Fort n. 3, something begins to fracture: the fort has collapsed, the furniture overturned, and the figure lies on the ground asleep among the remains of what once stood there. Exhaustion has taken over. The background grows darker, the sky closes in. There is no explicit tragedy, only the quiet melancholy of someone who stopped playing without ever truly meaning to. In the other works on view, play shifts toward the body and identity.

In The Gentleman and The Lady, two large figures painted like court portraits displaced in time, the subjects wear clothes that do not belong to them: layered garments, improbable combinations, distorted proportions. It is the universal gesture of dressing up in one’s parents’ clothes, of trying to become someone else before even knowing who one is. And yet the background reveals the fiction: beyond the fabric used as a backdrop, the edge of a doorway becomes visible. The construction remains exposed, as if to suggest that pretending is a serious act, one with its own architecture.

The Unknown Girl in Hats pushes this game to the point of excess: three fur hats stacked one atop another, an almost ceremonial absurdity. But the girl is not a child — her gaze is direct, her body partially exposed, her presence unmistakably adult. The game has transformed into something else, though it is impossible to say exactly when the shift occurred. Here too, a fragment of sky visible above interrupts the illusion of the backdrop: reality always filters through, even within the most carefully orchestrated constructions.

In Ostrich, absurdity reaches its fullest form. A woman rides an ostrich with the posture of an equestrian statue: turban on her head, reins in hand. Beside her, a man wrapped in improbable garments watches her closely. At first glance, the ostrich almost appears to be an extension of the female body, a hybrid creature; only upon closer inspection does the scene fully reveal itself. This is one of the most distinctive features of Strelyaev-Nazarko’s work: the detail that does not immediately resolve itself, that demands a second look, even a third. His paintings do not reveal themselves in a single reading. Throughout the project, bright colors emerge from dark, misty, almost out-of-focus backgrounds: earthy grays and dreamlike atmospheres from which figures emerge like images already in the process of dissolving. And the faces, in nearly every work, carry the same unmistakable expression: tired eyes, heavy eyelids, like those of someone who has just woken up or is about to fall asleep.

There is no anguish in these faces, but something subtler — a weary tenderness, the residue of a happiness that was once real but is now difficult to bring clearly into focus. La generazione felice is made of this very substance. 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. (Text by Valeria Conti)

Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko (1998, Kharkiv, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian artist who lives and works in Milan. His practice is shaped by the obliquely political context of his upbringing, echoing the chimerical narratives and visual languages inherited. After graduating in Industrial Design in his hometown, Strelyaev-Nazarko moved to Italy, drawn by the country’s rich artistic heritage and the opportunity to engage directly with the traditions of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque. He later earned a Master’s degree in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies 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 the solo exhibition Butterfly Hunt at the gallery’s Venice space, followed by participation in group exhibitions in Milan and Paris. In March 2026, the works Untitled (2023) and Paramnesia (2023) were featured in Louis Vuitton’s Autumn/Winter 2026 collection designed by Nicolas Ghesquière.