Mikhail Ardashnikov has been fascinated by history, anthropology and literature, myths and heritage of various cultures since childhood. Later an interest in art also appeared: he was charmed by the severity of geometric bodies, the expressiveness of the black line in illustrations. But the real craving for creativity emerged later, when he dived into art as a self-taught artist. The desire to explore the problems of cognition, archetypal cultural symbols and the architecture of dreams helped him to develop their own system of signs, which plunges the viewer into the whirlpool of mysticism.