The Moon Pool. Archives is a solo exhibition by Nikolay Koshelev, presented by the State Tretyakov Gallery in collaboration with Triumph Gallery. Working at the intersection of painting, drawing, and ceramics, Koshelev draws inspiration from the aesthetics of Russian Symbolism and revisits the artistic legacy of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) movement.

This multimedia project introduces the fictional early 20th-century artist Alexander Zilverhof. Through the lens of a forgotten ballet production for Diaghilev’s Seasons—a performance that never came to life—the exhibition unfolds a richly imagined archive: sketches, scenography fragments, ceramics, drawings, and handwritten texts. Influenced by German Romanticism and the mysticism of The Blue Rose, Zilverhof’s unrealised libretto tells the story of a girl who, under the moonlight by a quiet pond, becomes part of her own vision.

In Koshelev’s hands, fiction becomes a method of poetic reconstruction and the archive—a space where lost histories and imagined pasts intertwine.