The Walled Garden

In The Walled Garden, New York–based artist Vadim Pugin unveils a new body of work probing the contours of subjectivity in an era shaped by commodified attention and Baroque spectacle. Through ceramics, sound and video, Pugin reconstructs the architecture of control embedded in online platforms: the curated feed as endless folds of illusory abundance, the recommendation engine as a network of garden paths personalized for each visitor, and the algorithm as a sovereign force that has already determined the direction of our movement. Drawing on two decades of insider experience in advertising technology, Pugin makes the invisible machinery visible — exploring a space inside the surveillance garden where a political imagination could emerge. Vadim Pugin (b. 1986, Moscow, Russia) is a New York–based multidisciplinary artist working across ceramics, video and sound. His sculptures and installations combine handmade materials with computational systems to create objects that appear to sense, gaze back at and respond to the viewer. Moving between the tangible and the digital, Pugin investigates how contemporary perception is shaped by platforms, surveillance, feedback loops and algorithmic systems of control. Before turning fully to art, Pugin spent nearly two decades in advertising technology and digital media. Working within the infrastructures of attention, targeting and behavioral prediction, he gained direct insight into the systems that now form the subject of his practice. Rather than treating technology as a neutral tool, Pugin approaches it as an environment—one that actively shapes desire, memory, movement and visibility. Vadim Pugin holds a Master’s degree from the Russian State University for the Humanities. He studied contemporary art through the Learning Environment program in Moscow, where he worked in the studios of Dmitry Morozov (::vtol::), Alexander Povzner and Arseny Zhilyaev. He left Moscow and eventually settled in New York in 2022. During this period of displacement, his practice shifted toward ceramic and hybrid beings—forms shaped by rupture, adaptation and the search for non-human modes of sensing. Pugin’s recent exhibitions include Exaltation, Plato, New York, NY (2025); The New Uncanny at The New Uncanny Gallery, New York, NY (2025); IX Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia and Everything Counts, Ground Solyanka, Moscow, Russia (2022). Pugin was the winner of the Vyksa Festival Open Competition for Urban Sculpture as part of Resitor Group in 2023.