At the beginning of 2026, the cultural landscape of Dubna was enriched with the first professional exhibition space: the JINR Gallery opened at the International Conference Centre. Its first project is an exhibition by one of the most famous artists of our time, a pioneer of Russian kineticism Francisco Infante. At the opening ceremony, he shared what it feels like to stand at the "gate of truth", why scientists and artists should not argue about infinity, and what question he would ask the infinity itself.

– This year, your concept of an artefact celebrates its half-century anniversary. Over these 50 years, dozens of trends have changed in world art, digital media has emerged, and artificial intelligence has learned how to generate images. Yet your artefacts are still created manually, in the wild, using mirrors and threads. What is the secret of this approach and why has this idea not exhausted itself?

– The meaning behind my artefacts is philosophical, as I have always pondered the idea of infinity. I did not know what it was. It felt as if I got thrown into water without knowing how to swim. I was floundering, trying to discover something. And yet, I did have enough inner strength to stay afloat and find some answers.
When making art, one can come across the "gate of truth". I did twice. You do not usually understand that was the gate right away. The realisation comes in retrospect.
The first time happened in the 1960s, when I tried to understand what infinity is. To be honest, I have yet to figure that out. I am not a scientist, I do not create verbal texts with strict logic. I am an artist. I have always relied on my intuition. I intuitively felt that the world was endless, and I was just a grain of sand thrown into it. While trying to grasp this concept, I took up geometric art.
The second time I found myself at this gate was when I realised that nature itself can be endowed with the sign of infinity. I started seeing nature as its symbol. And the art object that I bring to nature is a symbol of the technical part of the world. After all, art is always an act of symbolisation, which boils down to creating a metaphor. At some point, I realised that a simple image on a plane was not suitable for adequately conveying my ideas, and I began to create geometric objects in the space of nature. Sometimes, there was an unavoidable discrepancy between the natural environment and an object invented by the artist. Thus, my idea of infinity was embodied in a symbol of nature, and the objects began to reflect the technical part of the world – all the technologies and machines that sound autonomous in our lives today.
There always something new to discuss about this topic. I deliberately make each new artefact series different from the previous one. For me, what I'm working on right now is always preferable, because that's how a new idea arises that I'm trying to implement.

– The first thing that intuitively opposes infinity is our life cycle: human life is inevitably finite. Which human-made things can outlive us and this world?

– All is infinite in the face of infinity. This sounds like a tautology, but tautology is sometimes significant in philosophy.
Do you think our life is finite?
One person’s life sure is. One is born, one lives, and one dies. But life doesn't end with you and me. It continues in our children, descendants. They continue the life of their ancestors, and this is the most important sign of infinity inherent in all things. According to this principle, galaxies exist, human life is arranged in the same way on a historical scale, and the same is true for microparticles studied in quantum mechanics. So all this is infinity.

Scientists studying the laws of the universe deal with infinity too, but in a scientific sense. Do you feel any kinship with them? Is it possible that an artist and a researcher are doing the same thing, just using different tools?

Creativity unites all those who are engaged in it, be it science or art. But the specifics are so different that I wouldn't tell a researcher about infinity. Researchers have own logic and science-based theories. I use a different language, the language of intuition. I have nothing to say to scientists about it.
I know examples of researchers, while thoroughly engaged in science, suddenly deciding to take up a paintbrush. And I don’t usually find the result good as an artist. Due to the specifics of their consciousness, a scientist tends to depict what they already know, illustrating the facts. But art is not an illustration. It is the creation of something completely new, as proved by the metaphor.
Metaphor is the main concept for an artist. It cannot be determined in advance. It is born from a billion connections, synthesised in the mind or the heart of a person in an inexplicable way. That is why in art, the comprehension of what you have created comes after the fact. It's like we're starting to understand our own works in hindsight. It's a living process.
Infinity is manifested and actualised precisely in our consciousness. The "con-" part is very significant: we form our concept of the world in accordance with something. For some, God may be the main point of reference, but for others, infinity is.

If you could ask one question to nature that you would definitely get an answer to, what would you ask?

I can never get precise answers to my questions from anyone. But speaking abstractly, I would ask: "Where does our past go?".
Sometimes I wonder if anything that happened was real. The thing is, those are my experiences. They say that physiologically, not a single cell remains in an elderly person from the being they were in childhood. Everything changes. But I know it was me!
Where does it all go? Where is it stored? Was this past as real as our conversation? There are childhood experiences that shaped me as a person, but I have no idea what or where they are. I would ask this question straight to infinity.

Scientists are discussing the existence of a noosphere, but I have yet to get an answer from it. I am not sure why I care so much. We do not know the future, and, from my experience, we do not need to know everything about it. But was there our past? Have I lived? Was it me? And where is it all now? That's the main mystery for me.

Eugene Bragin, JINR Press Office