DER KUSS DES FAUNS: NIKOLAY KOSHELEV

Der Kuss Des Fauns presents a new ceramic fireplace by Nikolay Koshelev, still warm from the kiln. The piece brings the hearth, an ancient archetype of shelter and gathering, into a location of constant movement.

Koshelev's practice unfolds across painting, drawing, ceramics, and installation, reviving the vocabulary of fin-de-siècle decadence and the occult. He conjures a twilight world populated by anthropomorphic creatures, storks, owls, and fantastical beasts. In ceramics, he works in the wake of Mikhail Vrubel and Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat, updating the language of symbolism for a present marked by a renewed interest in mysticism. His figures move between the world he paints and the one he sculpts.

The fireplace is composed of glazed tiles whose surfaces seem to have absorbed a century of light, lending the structure the appearance of an object excavated rather than made. Across its front panel, a relief unfolds: a faun leaning toward a figure in suspended embrace. The faun is a Roman mythological creature, half-human and half-goat. His kiss carries the pull of temptation against restraint, the wild against composure. The fire itself carries this logic: warmth drawn from what could otherwise consume.

The work moves between functional design and sculpture, hearth and altar. As fireplace, it follows the logic of utility, frame and opening. As sculpture, it abandons that logic for relief, ornament, and ritual presence. Neither register dominates.