Laboratoriya marks Andreea Ilie’s first solo exhibition with Jecza Gallery. The exhibition brings together a new body of sculptural works.
Guided by the metaphor of the child as soft wax, Soviet ideology transformed the entire world of childhood into a total pedagogical environment. Through extensive research and travel across the former Soviet space, Andreea demonstrates that this “laboratory” was far more than a theoretical metaphor: it was a concrete architectural reality, a network of physical structures in which political ambitions were translated into matter and space.
“As an artist, I am not necessarily interested in a simple condemnation or in extreme nostalgia. What interests me is building an archaeological and poetic relationship, one that is profoundly dialectical. I aim to peel back the superimposed layers: the utopian layer of projection, the layer of historical wear, and the layer of contemporary reappropriation. ” (excerpt from the interview “Laboratoriya: The Ruins of a Future Once Imagined as Eternal, ” given to Igloo magazine, Feb 2026).
The artist’s relationship with this legacy of failed utopia takes the form of an archaeological and dialectical investigation, carried out with critical rigor. The works in Laboratoriya function both as replicas and as reflections: forms extracted from their original contexts and reconstructed by the artist in metal and ceramic.
