Dreaming in Colour, a new exhibition at the Opera Gallery in London, revisits the surrealists of the previous century, more in homage than imitation.
I suspect few of the emerging artists included here – and certainly none of those I spoke to on opening morning – would consciously describe themselves as surrealists. Yet the surrealist aspiration to evoke a sense of the marvellous and mysterious in the everyday is certainly present.
Take Sretenko (2025-2026) by the Spain-based Russian artist Sasha Zimulin, a vivid landscape of his home suburb of Moscow. In this piece, Zimulin conjures up not the sight of the city, but its ambience, and the feelings stirred in someone standing on the edge of the scene.
