Iryna Merkulova | Peripheral Surfaces

Exhibition Dates: March 7 – 21
Vernissage: Saturday, March 7 from 3 – 5 pm, artist talk @ 3:45 pm

Wall Space Gallery is excited to present Peripheral Surfaces, a solo exhibition by Montreal-based artist Iryna Merkulova, in celebration of International Women’s Month. In this series, Merkulova treats the storefront window not as a transparent boundary but as a charged surface where desire, access, and distance collide. Her paintings do not present the city as coherent or navigable. Instead, they concentrate on glass, signage, glare, and artificial light, the very elements that structure how we look and what we are permitted to see.

Born in Kyiv and based in Montreal, Merkulova approaches urban space from a position shaped by movement and relocation. Reflection becomes more than a visual device. It becomes a condition of inhabiting the city without fully claiming it. Commercial surfaces dominate the field of vision, flattening architecture into image and transforming interiors into spectacle.
Across Peripheral Surfaces, the city emerges as layered, seductive, and unstable. Glass does not clarify but multiplies, and signage does not simply advertise but structures perception. Merkulova’s brushwork reinforces this instability, allowing forms to flicker between solidity and dissolution. These paintings locate urban life at the edge of visibility, where belonging is provisional and space is experienced through surface.