RARARES Gallery in Dubai’s DIFC district invites everyone to explore Shifted Diagonal, a solo exhibition by Ruslan Gudiev, running through 18 February 2026. Curated by Marina Baisel, this presentation offers an immersive encounter with his evolving abstract language and his long-standing engagement with geometry, movement, and perception.
Building conceptually on Gudiev’s major 2023 retrospective, Fragment of the Big Diagonal at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), Shifted Diagonal reorients the viewer’s gaze by literally and symbolically displacing the diagonal axis that has underpinned the artist’s practice for decades.
The shift signals a recalibration of seeing: pushing abstraction into fresh territories through new material and emotional states. Across the exhibition, lines intersect with architectural rigour yet retain a lyrical motion; they oscillate between restraint and chromatic intensity. The displayed works include dynamic compositions that reflect both Gudiev’s analytical precision and his intuitive rhythmical sense.
About the artist
Ruslan Gudiev (b. 1944, Kobi) was educated at the Tskhinvali Art School. His multifaceted career spans painting, architecture, design, and music, the latter including performances as a guitarist and bassist in jazz and pop ensembles before his full-time return to painting in the mid-1980s.
Gudiev’s early life in the dramatic Caucasian landscape informed a sensibility attuned to form, space, and metaphysical resonance. Across more than four decades, he has developed a body of work that probes abstract landscapes, cosmic forms, and urban structures, translating existential inquiry into visual form. His signature series, such as A Fragment of the Big Diagonal, Dynamic City (2022), and City by Night (2019), demonstrate a dynamic interplay of chaos and order.
Gudiev’s work has been displayed in many exhibitions, which include A Network of Raindrops (solo) (Nadya Kotova Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium, 2025); In Dialogue: Abstraction & Figuration (Visioner Gallery, New York, USA, 2023); Eastern Bazaar (MMOMA, 2019); Breakfast in Rublyovka (Galerie Mitte, Bremen, Germany, 2011), and others.
Gudiev’s artworks are held in major private and public collections, such as MMOMA, and Walter Bischoff Galerie (Stuttgart, Germany), to name a few.
To learn more about Shifted Diagonal, please go to the official web page of the exhibition.
You might also be interested in exploring the galleries of DIFC.
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