12 February 2026 –27 July 2026

JINR x Veretevo joint project

ArteFacts
of Francisco InFante

The theme of the JINR Gallery's first exhibition is not an accidental choice. The goal of science is to know the world, and its main tool is continuous experiment. Francisco Infante's creative path is an experiment that has been going on for more than sixty years and remains faithful to the idea based on the desire to comprehend the mystery of the universe and show the inexhaustibility of its forms of existence. Infante's art, like scientific discoveries that occurred as a result of random events or observations, was born as a result of the realisation that struck him in his youth, "the world around us is infinite". Attempts to find an answer to the question about the pillars of creation led him to create the "visual metaphors of infinity", and then artefacts – installations created in the space of nature using artificial objects – diverse, often multi-component movable mirror structures, compositions of wood, cardboard, paper, and threads. The artist's goal is to discover a "playing field" that, according to Infante's concept, allows him to control the attributes of nature itself: sunlight, air, snow, earth, and heaven. The result of the installations created by Infante together with his wife and co-author Nonna Goryunova is a series of photographs, each capturing a single point of view chosen by the author, presenting an "artistic event" to the viewer.

Francisco Infante's first exhibition in Dubna will let us trace the creative path of the outstanding artist and show the viability of the author's concept of an Artefact that celebrates its half-century anniversary in 2026. 

The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, an international intergovernmental research organization, is opening a new page in its history – the JINR Gallery, the first professional exhibition space in the Dubna science city, aiming to popularise scientific knowledge through an open, accessible dialogue with the viewer about the intersection and mutual enrichment of science and art. Here, within the walls of the International Conference Centre, built in the era of Soviet modernism, art becomes a natural extension of the Institute’s intellectual activities, offering the international scientific community a universal language of artistic imagery and a territory of free reflection.

The ArteFacts of Francisco InFante exhibition will present the works of one of the most famous artists of our time, a pioneer of kinetic art in Russia, the author of objects and installations, the creator of a special kind of art – an Artefact. Prepared jointly with the Veretevo Gallery, the project is not the first, but the most ambitious example of cooperation in culture between the two collaborating institutions. The exhibition will showcase over 120 works from the master's collection, created from the 1960s to the mid-2020s, including new, never-before-presented works from the Spiral Eidos Symbols series and a kinetic object from the Hearts of Curved Space artefact series, recreated in the workshops of the Laboratory of High Energy Physics at JINR for the exhibition.