Ely & Pavlov “Smoke Scrolling”
2025-2026
Music: Andrew Sprrw
A project about escapism as the new norm, evasion, procrastination, and frustration, where virtuality becomes more real than materiality, and web surfing turns into total doomscrolling. A state where one’s own thoughts drown in the flow of information, and an excess of rapid impressions causes persistent bouts of nausea, déjà vu, and sleep paralysis. The exhibition is like a walk through the work of the artist duo “Ely and Pavlov” in recent years, in an atmosphere of nostalgia, through familiar but non-existent places.
The journey stretches across four locations. Travoctor is a space where time is distorted, and simulacra and fragments of memes, born by chance, crawl on all sides, weighing heavily on the soul. The forest is an imaginary respite, where smog collects in crystalline pixels, composing phantasmagoria in the ashes. An entrance with a dirty staircase, where traces of young vandals are preserved — from scribbles to sooty stalactites made of matches. The ruins of a cinema, where frames with views and signs of France flash by — images created from soot and familiar to the point of pain.
Osip Dymov will be the guide, stalker, or rather NPC (non-player character) in this fumes-filled world. The character is based on Joseph Perelman (1878–1959), a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and comedian of Jewish origin. In the 1900s, he studied and worked in St. Petersburg, and from 1913 he lived in America and Europe, and in 2025 he was “discovered” by artists.
First point: the escalator is a place of transition from nowhere to nowhere, where time accelerates and freezes, like scrolling through a news feed. On either side of this passenger conveyor belt, simulacra, ghosts of ephemeral entities born by chance, crawl out of billboards like smoke weighing on the soul. Fragments of memes, scenes from short films, and the main character rush back and forth: as if stuck in your teeth, they make you want to close your eyes and be somewhere else.
Here comes the long-awaited respite—silence in the forest. Nature always heals, rejuvenates, and gives rest to tired eyes… Only this is not a real forest at all… Everything here is unreal, even the smoke… Upon closer inspection, it becomes crystalline pixels, forming ever-changing phantasmagoria… Parts of a landscape buried in a thick layer of post-apocalyptic ash.
Another attempt to cling to a familiar atmosphere – to remember childhood. The entrance is typical, but completely impossible, twisted and illusory. Climbing the dirty and dimly lit staircase is like searching for the marks of “brave deeds” left by little hooligans: from painting or scratching the walls to throwing lit matches at the ceiling, which grow into flocks of stalactites.
The last door leads to the ruins of a cinema, where a film is playing, showing moments of Dymov’s journey through Paris… Before the hero’s eyes, frames slowly crawl by, created based on the history of France in the context of smoke: a train arrives, a panorama with the Eiffel Tower unfolds, the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral appears, then something else that is painfully familiar, even to those who have never seen anything like it in reality.
*Osip Dymov is the literary pseudonym of Perelman, Joseph Isidorovich (1878-1959). He was a talented Russian writer, journalist, translator, successful playwright (in theater and cinema), and comedian of Jewish descent. In the 1900s, he studied and worked in St. Petersburg, and from 1913 he lived in America and Europe. He was a polyglot and was also known as a man with a wide range of interests and connections. Among his friends and acquaintances were Bryusov, Chaliapin, Lunacharsky, Einstein, Dobuzhinsky, and others.
He was the main character in the exhibition “Dymov in Paris” by the duo “Ely and Pavlov,” which took place at the end of 2025 in the media library of the French Institute.
Text: Kate Mikhatova
