Shtager Gallery presents a group of international artists in a curated stand at London Art Fair 2022. ‘Office Ecology’ invites visitors to reflect on the various aspects of human interaction within a work environment.

As we reassess our relationship with time and space after two years of restricted mobility and increasingly blurred lines between work and play, Vitaly Pushnitsky investigates our inherent connection with nature and the networks within and amidst, while Yusuke Akamatsu finds inspiration predominantly in hidden corners of the city. The bright colours of the latter’s photographs betray the darker threads running through his work that lament the loss of culture in modern society.

Both Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai and Gregori Maiofis’ combine classical with cutting-edge elements, respectively questioning accepted hierarchies and creating a sense of retro science fiction at a time when reality has long overtaken former utopias, whereas recent graduate Alexei Alexander Iszmailov questions the binaries still defining industrial and domestic domains.

The most candid contributions are by women artists, with Maria Arendt applying embroidery to construct architectural forms that still conjure predominantly male associations, and Katia Kesic’s ceramics responding to the fetishisation of female attributes and the censorship thereof. Viewed within the setting of an office environment both serve as reminders of prevailing hierarchies and inequalities.

Marina Alexeeva’s paradoxical multimedia installation is set in a claustrophobic office block and characters playing out scenes while watching the clock – or are they being watched? – itself enclosed in an actual box to further enhance the subjects’ inability to escape the confines of their assigned roles.

Presented in a playful and entertaining setting, ‘Office Ecology’ aims to offer an alternative solution to describing a place of business.