Whitewall Projects and Carpenters Workshop Gallery are pleased to present Daria Gamulina’s solo exhibition “Fragments of Elegance” on view March 9—22, 2025 at Carpenters Workshop Gallery Marais in Paris.
In her latest body of work, Gamulina invites us into a world where fashion, memory, and art history converge. Nine new paintings will be presented, imbued with the graphic sensibility of 1980s and 1990s editorial photography, recall the meticulous attention to detail found in the works of Italian painter and set designer Domenico Gnoli (1933-1970), where cropped compositions and enlarged fragments of fabric transcend their materiality to become symbols of intimacy, power, and desire. Gamulina isolates elements of dress and adornment—gloves, heels, the tailored cut of a jacket—suggesting the presence of a figure that remains just beyond our grasp.
Much like Gnoli, whose paintings of textured garments evoked both the personal and the universal, Gamulina deconstructs fashion into poetic relics of identity and cultural memory. Each brushstroke renders the fabric of a past that is both constructed and elusive, recalling the way we edit, reshape, and recolor our own recollections. Her work is a meditation on nostalgia, the passage of time, and the role of clothing as an archive of human presence.
Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
Gamulina’s compositions, with their bold silhouettes and striking contrasts, also find resonance in historical portraiture. The precise folds and sumptuous textiles in her paintings echo the grand yet restrained elegance of Les Gentilshommes du Duc d’Orléans (1839) by Henri Félix Philippoteaux. In that work, as in Gamulina’s, garments are not mere decoration but bearers of social codes, embodying status, power, and personal history. The tension between concealment and revelation, between surface and depth, is ever-present, drawing the viewer into a dialogue between fashion, representation, and self-perception.
At the core of “Fragments of Elegance” lies Gamulina’s fascination with the enduring power of visual culture. Her paintings are not just reflections of fashion’s ephemeral nature but testaments to its ability to shape identity and evoke collective memory. By isolating these details, she shifts our gaze—asking us to see the unseen, to recognize the significance of a simple seam, a flash of color, a fold in fabric. In doing so, she offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the history of style, bridging past and present, art and attire, personal and universal.
A New Series of Paintings by Daria Gamulina
Daria Gamulina, Green and black, 2024.
Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
WHITEWALL: Your work is deeply rooted in fashion, memory, and nostalgia. Can you share how your early exposure to retro fashion magazines shaped your artistic practice?
DARIA GAMULINA: I would say my artistic practice was shaped not only by fashion magazines but also by my love for cinema, literature, and theater. In my paintings, I try to depict those small, seemingly unimportant, and ephemeral moments and focus on showcasing details – the same ways cinematographers do, or fashion books and catalogs, or postcards. I find this kind of incomplete storytelling, where you only show bits and pieces of the protagonist’s life (and the audience needs to figure out the rest on their own), to convey a certain softness, romanticism, and mystery that I enjoy.
WW: In your paintings, garments become both symbols of identity and traces of an unseen presence. How do you decide which sartorial elements to isolate and emphasize on the canvas?
DG: I would say this is up to my artistic intuition, and I have no clear answer to this. Some textures, patterns, or details touch me more than others, and then in my head, I envision a story that I can compose on my canvas and retell this story in a personal way.
WW: Your work has been compared to that of Domenico Gnoli, particularly in the way you crop and magnify details of clothing. Do you see your practice as an extension of this tradition, or do you aim to subvert it?
DG: Definitely, Domenico Gnoli’s work has affected me very much, but not only him. I really enjoy the works of Karin Kneffel and Poppy Jones. I wouldn’t say that my aim is to subvert this tradition. I think that for me, my artistic process is more about creation of new personal narratives, and looking for ways out from old clichés and even traditions if I feel too restrained by them. In my practice, I search for new doors to open and not look back too much. Which does not mean that other artists’ works do not inspire me.
A Twist on Traditional Portraiture
Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
WW: Historical portraiture, such as Henri Félix Philippoteaux’s Les Gentilshommes du Duc d’Orléans, plays a role in your latest exhibition. What draws you to these historical references, and how do you reinterpret them in a contemporary context?
DG: This painting belongs to an academic style tradition, but artists rarely (especially back then) produce portraits with no faces. In that particular work, we don’t see the sitters’ faces, but we know their names. So it creates a funny sort of way that a painting conveys information – something’s a secret and something’s available to us—but it’s not what we’d expect from a painting. It is very conceptual work for that time and unusual. I think those aspects are most intriguing to me – I believe that’s also what makes this painting so popular. Despite the French Salon having strict rules, and preferring clear regulations for war scenes, paintings, portraits of aristocrats etc… This portrait is very personal and at the same time does not give away any certain information. In my work I attempt to do the same: to give visual information but at the same time conceal it.
WW: There’s a tension in your work between presence and absence—the body is suggested but never fully revealed. What does this ambiguity mean to you?
DG: This ambiguity means that I am not talking about the body itself. I am talking about presence and closeness. I am talking about universal marks for everyone.
Pulling from Fashion, Performance, and Art History
Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
Daria Gamulina, I remember her as a blonde, 2025.
WW: How does your background in costume design and theater influence your approach to painting? How do elements of performance, storytelling, and scenography come into play in your compositions?
DG: Well, I have actually somewhat recently enrolled as an MA student at the painting and performance department at UAL, Saint Martins College. And since I’ve started my programme, I feel like it does not matter anymore what medium I use as an artist – be it painting, performance, costume design or sculpture… It gave me a somewhat clearer vision of my own practice. I think I do take away a lot from scenography and costume design though. Particularly the way you can convey stories with visual props only – there’s a certain subtlety to it, that’s not always appreciated.
WW: You’ve exhibited in diverse cultural contexts, from St. Petersburg to Miami to Paris. Have these experiences shaped your understanding of how fashion and identity are perceived across different audiences?
DG: I have definitely felt and experienced how each place has a different audience – some are more conservative and traditional, and others are more liberal, prone to experimentation. In an ideal world, art would be universal and accessible to everyone, everywhere – similarly to fashion – it could/should build bridges between various identities and contexts. Too many things separate people in this world anyways.
But I guess, what I have learned is that there are certain feelings, symbols, experiences that can be universal to the majority of people, regardless of their place in the world. That’s why I don’t particularly want to convey any overly politicised point of view in my paintings.
WW: With “Fragments of Elegance,” you explore the power of fashion beyond its ephemerality. What do you hope viewers take away from this exhibition?
DG: I would want the viewers to see/realize that there is a certain kind of strength that can come from their own ways of self-expression – be it via fashion, personal style or any other visual signifiers. I myself believe that there can be something powerful and telling about how we visually appear in the world – and fashion definitely helps with that.
WW: Was there a particular starting point for the body of work on view?
DG: I would say that there were a couple of things that prompted me to create this series of works. One is definitely just looking through vintage fashion magazines and noticing the “classics.” But at the same time, I was thinking of how stories are/can be conveyed visually in theater via costumes and scenography. And then I’ve decided to just focus on details and snippets to provide that kind of ambiguous narrative.
WW: What kind of scale, color palette, and textures were you drawn to for this series?
DG: I do love repetitive, simple patterns and the familiar, recognizable pieces of fashion – such as a striped shirt or black stockings. I also love it when you can kind of sense the mood of the owner of a particular piece of clothing behind these details.
WW: Are your subjects real or imagined?
DG: This is mixed from lookbooks, marketplaces, imagination, fragments, shots, memories, movies.
A Day in the Studio with Daria Gamulina
Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
WW: Can you tell us about your studio? What is a typical day like for you there?
DG: Usually, the first thing I do is set up the lighting in my studio. I need an even, bright light for painting and I have those special bright lamps that I’ve installed there. But that requires that I cover up all the windows in my studio so I don’t get any daylight inside.
Then I also have tubes of paint and rags piled on my table, so it’s easier to find what I need, around a cup of unfinished coffee and a cigarette. I don’t like to be distracted when I work, so I usually work better in the evening or at night. I do love working on my easel the most – it is easy to change the height on it so I can paint standing up or sitting down. And then, I just sit down and paint until I finish.
WW: How would you describe your own personal style? Does that influence your painting practice?
DG: I used to mainly express myself through my personal style. A long time ago it was pretty wild. Now it’s definitely more toned down! I used to work as a stylist for commercial shoots, and as a costume designer for movies, so this work has definitely affected the whole of my practice.
WW: Is there an element of your practice you make sure to do each day? Like drawing, sketching, or writing?
DG: Every day I try to find new music to paint to – I can’t work in silence. I also sketch and rework my old sketches everyday, and rework what I don’t like. Every day I try to clean up traces of solvent and oil paints from the floor. Then I just paint, and have my own little rituals at the studio.
