The artist’s creative activity has for over 70 years served as a laboratory of exploring and analyzing structures that underlie the surrounding world. The retrospective including over 150 pieces of art from the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, that of the artist himself and private collections, shows the complexity of Valery Yurlov’s method and integrity of his artistic vision.

The title of the exhibition is somewhat paradoxical. As is well known, reasoning is a philosophical system where the picture of the world is based on logical inferences or intuitive conclusions about events and phenomena; it does not provide for a verification by logical methods. Yet Yurlov’s “experiments” are not scientific; these are examples of “reasoning in color”, visual projections of the artist’s muse and observation related to the order of being.

The works displayed at the exhibition are grouped according to the artist’s basic cognitive and plastic constructions: Counterforms, A Pair of Forms, To be In, and Trinity. Figurative drawings neighbor with abstract collages and pictures of the 1950–1970s while photos, assemblages and items – with pictorial pieces of the 2020s. Regardless of the material. be it paper, canvas, metal, wood or plastic, Yurlov is able to realize his concept in a clear and integral way.

The artist’s new works do not go over the old ground but present the next stage of experiments confirming the validity of his artistic system. The exhibition Valery Yurlov. Experiments in Reasoning is an “open workshop” where the viewer becomes a witness of the continuous process: old ideas acquire surprising interpretations while laconic compositions hide the depth comparable to mathematic formulas.