For Liste 2026 we present a site-specific dialogue between Nikolay Morgunov and María Elena Pombo comprising inked cotton paintings, cement sculptures, fossil rubbings on paper and a stromatolite specimen. This proposal is a shared field of material migration, where geological displacement meets procedural erosion: straight lines collide with coal spontaneity, rubbings trace tectonic drift, and resin softens the tension between control and abandonment, resonating from origin to trace and back to persistent form.

Nikolay Morgunov’s practice is marked by a minimalist approach, combining rigid, predefined grids with chaotic graphic sublayers that appear almost accidental. For Liste he layers precise grids on cotton with intuitive coal marks and transparent resin, questioning cycles of construction and return through cement installations that evoke monumentality on intimate scales. His compositions play with contrast, where the precision of straight lines, rarely found in nature, collides with spontaneous brushstrokes made with coal. Transparent resin resembling a still water surface softens these tensions and alters depth perception. Through these elements his works evoke cycles of life and abandonment, shifting between clarity and erosion, between freshness and dust. His process is a game guided by strict rules and intuitive responses, imitating real patterns while subtly reshaping perception. At the heart of his practice lies constant inquiry: as he constructs a new piece, he questions whether each gesture brings the work forward or returns it to its empty origin. Monumentality fascinates him, evoked on smaller scales through rhythmic tension in the absence of color, where repetition makes disconnected parts function as a whole.
Nikolay is a Russian artist based in Barcelona; he has presented solo exhibitions with our gallery and galleries in Moscow, Copenhagen, and London. His latest art fair participations have been Art Paris and Zona Maco, where we had the honor of his work being acquired by one of the MoMA Ps1 trustees.

María Elena Pombo works through open-ended and interconnected projects that investigate real and speculative pasts, presents, and futures through installations, sculptures, videos, and moments that play with site-specificity, ephemerality, and participation. For Liste 2026, María Elena is presenting her never-before-seen research project “The Migrated Tropic," developed during residencies at Yaddo and Smack Mellon. It records 490-million-year-old stromatolite fossils through carbon rubbings and video. A local neighbor’s gift of a fossil specimen shifts the work from absence to reconstructed presence, articulating continental movement through imprints and traces. Her daily visits to Lester Park produced rubbings following rock-art protocols alongside photographic documentation, expanding displacement from human diaspora to Earth’s tectonic history.
These records consider territory as continuously moved, fractured, and reassembled, rethinking migration beyond human timelines. Through field-based documentation, Pombo expands the notion of diaspora beyond personal narratives to geological scales, where ancient tropical seas become present-day New York terrain. The stromatolite rubbings serve as direct imprints of deep time, while the gifted specimen introduces human exchange into geological narrative, transforming absence into tangible witness. María Elena Pombo has participated in major biennial and museum exhibitions, including Bronx Calling: The Sixth AIM Biennial at the Bronx Museum of Arts (2024) and Resonance at the London Design Biennale at Somerset House, where she received the Theme Medal (2021). Recent solo exhibitions include presentations in Caracas, Italy, and Japan, alongside an active practice in public art and site-responsive actions across New York City. Her work has been supported by significant residencies and fellowships such as Yaddo, Smack Mellon, and the New Museum’s NEW INC program, as well as grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Queens Arts Fund. Her work is held in institutional collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sorondo Projects, founded by Venezuelan gallerist Juliana Sorondo, centers migration stories through young artists building careers across shifting geographies, often shaped by displacement, adaptation, and reinvention. Nikolay Morgunov embodies a Russian trajectory relocated to Barcelona, where his meticulously constructed grids chart systems of imposed order, repeatedly disrupted by lived experience, fracture, and interruption. María Elena Pombo carries Venezuela’s ongoing diaspora to New York; through sculptural fossils and fragile assemblages, her work reconstructs territory from absence, memory, and erosion.

As a Venezuelan gallery, we foreground these voices with intention, two distinct lives shaped by movement, whose identities remain fluid rather than fixed, carried as earth, trace, and imprint. Their practices speak to a deep connection to self that persists beyond national borders, revealing how belonging can be rebuilt, reimagined, and continuously negotiated.