Ilya Kutoboi is an illustrator based in Moscow. In 2013 he graduated from British Higher School of Art and Design, Graphic Design. He collaborates with the illustration agency BANG! BANG! STUDIO and the magazines GQ, Esquire, RBK Style and others. He usually uses acrylics in his paintings. 

EDUCATION:

• 2017 — Illustration Workshop, Russian Reporter Summer School, Dubna, Russia.
• 2017 — Design Legends, Future London Academy, London, United Kingdom.
• 2011-2013 — Graphic Design, British Higher School of Art and Design, Moscow, Russia.
• 1997-2002 — Physics and Technology, Kaluga State University, Kaluga, Russia.

SELECTED SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

• 2022 — a-s-t-r-a Open.Vol 1, a-s-t-r-a gallery, Winzavod Contemporary Art Center, Moscow, Russia.
• 2021 — Tropical Conditions Syndrome, Hlebzavod, Moscow, Russia.
• 2021 — MOST Contemporary Art Auction, Krasnodar, Russia.
• 2014 — Prosmotr, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• 2014 — Time for art, Moscow, Russia.

Jolie Alien was born in 2002 in Moscow.

An autodidact artist, she works with catchy images, simple plots, cropped compositions and expressive drawings.

Each of Jolie's works is introspective, connected with personal memories, which partly explains her visual language, which is intertwined with surreal images, simple geometric patterns, catchy inscriptions made with paint and spray.

Jolie's works resemble a wall that has been covered with graffiti for a long time: the figures float on top of each other, creating a collage effect. Jolie outlines youth, which she has direct access to and which is closed to the adult world.

The artist finishes her studies at the Moscow art INSTITUTE, combining a career in the fashion industry, participating in shows of such brands as Valentino, Off-White, Jil Sander, Paco Rabanne, Prada, Viviene Westwood, Simone Rocha, etc. Starred in international advertising campaigns Mango, Fendi, Adidas.

The rights to use the image of "Whirpool" were acquired by Mango for use in the release of a collection of t-shirts around the world. She was the subject of articles about her work in Document Journal, Vogue, InStyle, Elle and models.com.

Preparing for admission to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

Complementary colors, expressive drawing and collage compositions of her paintings may seem confusing to many, but this confusion, ambiguity is a special feature of Jolie's works that distinguishes them from many others. As an artist, she values and puts perception above reflection, intuitiveness and even a certain automaticity of her paintings are related to art Brut and some of the works of Jean Dubuffet.

Jolie's language is highly subjective and even introspective. Perhaps only classical techniques can now allow the artist the luxury of speaking out about himself and capturing the reality around him as an enduring impression.

Her works are in collections in Russia, China, Japan, Belgium and America.

Lives and works between Moscow, London, and Tokyo.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

• 2021 — Symbiosis, solo exhibition, Peak Moscow by a-s-t-r-a gallery, Moscow, Russia;
• 2020 — Cosmoscow Art Fair, a-s-t-r-a gallery, Moscow, Russia;
• 2020 — ENTER Art Fair, a-s-t-r-a gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark;
• 2020 — I Lost Track of the World", curated by Irina Shulzhenko, Richter space, Moscow, Russia;
• 2019 — One, Two, Three, curated by a-s-t-r-a, group exhibition, Cube.Moscow space, Moscow, Russia;
• 2019 — 20.11, curated by Irina Shulzhenko and Dmitry Yanchoglo, solo exhibition, Richter space, Moscow, Russia;
• 2019 — 1367 Number of My Tick - What to Do?, curated by a-s-t-r-a, solo exhibition, Cube.Moscow space, Moscow, Russia;
• 2019 — Color, live performance (creating a five-meter wall painting) at the opening of a-s-t-r-a LAB, Moscow, Russia;
• 2018 — Wanted, Kino gallery, Moscow, Russia.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

• www.vogue.com/article/model-jolie-alien-russias-youngest-rising-artist
• theblueprint.ru/culture/art/art-podarki
• sportchic.ru/fashion/model-i-hudozhnitsa-jolie-alien-otkryvaet-svoyu-vtoruyu-vystavku-v-moskve/
• www.documentjournal.com/2018/11/model-jolie-alien-discusses-her-first-solo-art-exhibition/
• theblueprint.ru/culture/interview/jolie-alien
• www.vogue.ru/fashion/model-business/kto_takaya_zhenya_makarova
• instyle.ru/moda/nashi-v-dele-chto-nuzhno-znat-o-modeli-zhene-makarovoy/
• www.mhpi.edu.ru/all_news/jolie-alien/
• typical-moscow.ru/vystavka-jolie-alien-ritz-carlton/ 
• www.kommersant.ru/doc/4550243
• theblueprint.ru/fashion/industry/art-fashion-russia
• m.vk.com/@storagemag-jolie-alien
• models.com/oftheminute/?p=99486
• models.com/oftheminute/?p=114030

Born June 29, 1988 in St. Petersburg.

Since 2022 he has been living and working in Moscow.

Kirill Doeshvili is an artist, poet and musician. He studied art, philosophy, poetry and literature. Attended courses for free students at the Academy of Repin. Studied at Dnepropetrovsk Art School. Participated in Russian and international exhibitions and residencies. 

Kirill sees his art through an eye that does not obey the man-made laws of perspective, an eye that is not corrupted by compositional logic, an eye that does not respond to the names of everything, but which must learn every object encountered in life through the adventure of perception.

"I dig deep to find the clearest water, and that's my way to go."

Doeshvili tries on a plane of paper subjective and metaphysical time, taking the position of an artist working with reality. Drawing itself turns into an interlocutor and a stranger with whom he begins to juggle images. In the process, they change, as does their relationship to space and to each other. New layers of interactions with the force that governs this dimension emerge. "As the universe flows, so do we transpire, because we are its stardust," says the artist.

The artist is the architect of worlds. Symbolically, to create his characters Doeshvili uses exactly archival architectural paper. Fictional characters suddenly come to life on the sheets: Treschak the Unpunished, Friendly Pirate the Rascal, Wandering Apollo, Unscientific Chatterbox, Neptune's Unspent Client, Romeo the Sad Man, Lunatic Pierrot and others.

The characters are constantly communicating telepathically and are in the same field, in the process of exchanging something for which the stars give them their blessing. Each work is a new situation in which events unfold dynamically, but they are all simultaneously linked by a common logic and characters. There is no good or bad among them. They are all embraced by the flame of love, but they don't know how to express it properly. Just like us.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

• 2022 - Juice from Stone and Earth, a-s-t-r-a gallery, Winzavod Contemporary Art Center, Moscow
• 2022 - a-s-t-r-a open.vol. 2, gallery a-s-t-r-a, CCCI Vinzavod, Moscow
• 2020 - art residence "South Coast" theme: "Secret".
• 2020 - participant of the project NEW REALITY. TO THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF UNOVIS.
• 2020 - art forum Berlin Art.
• 2020 - exhibition of expressionism, Gostiny Dvor
• 2020 - creation of psychedelic objects at Sunburn art festival Goa, India.
• 2019 - art residence "South Beach".
• 2018 - art festival "Colors of the World" Koktebel.
• 2017 - creation and art design, "Extreme festival".
• 2016 - "Tavrida".

Doeshvili's works are in private collections in Russia, Ukraine, the United States, Australia, England, Germany and the Czech Republic.

THE WORLD OF DOESHVILI

An instinctive Belief in the artistic form, a symbiosis of internal and external journeys, signs on the way forward in art.

Without thinking that death is near, I am constantly trying to comprehend the emptiness of all forms, which are distorted and modified, have their own magnitude and even a formal notion of time. When one paints or writes diligently, one has two types of signs of progress along the path, definite and indefinite, which indicate that the result will soon be reached. 

Uncertain signs, called basic signs, appear because of previous connections, even if one has never practiced art at all. Since they cannot be relied upon, I will not describe them here.

Certain signs appear as a result of drawing and are of two kinds: transient and unchangeable.

Transient signs can appear in reality as well as in mood. As for the first kind, when you are making preliminary sketches, you may feel as if your body is about to fall apart like the walls of a cracking house. Your voice may weaken, as in a state of extreme exhaustion. You may start convulsing like you are possessed by spirits. These are indicators that you have separated reality from the world of images.

Frustration with your own body, speech, and mind may appear in the mood. This demonstrates that you have purified yourself . If these states do not appear, then you have not had enough experience, so you need to dive further into the form.

As a result of fatigue, the actual signs show up in the bliss of the physical body, in the fact that you want to speak out, and in the mind everything is experienced as space. You can feel, "Nothing exists!" Along with that comes a joy pure as the sky. You may get the feeling that you have forgotten that there is a body, you don't notice your breath, and you don't want to leave the state of no thought, thinking, "This is it!" These are signs of mastering the stability of one's natural state, which is inherent in us. 

This understanding can also manifest itself in sensation: wherever your attention moves, you realize and comprehend that it is your own mind, you see the projections and returns of your thoughts as your own manifestation and realize that they are absolutely unobstantial, like space. These are signs that you have determined through seeing that the phenomena are your mind.

Born in 1994 in Ufa. The main direction in the work is abstractionism. Lives and works in Moscow and Paris. The works are in private collections.

EDUCATION:

• 2021-2022 - Free Workshops School of Contemporary Art, MMOMA
• 2012-2018 - Bauman Moscow State Technical University

"In my works abstraction is a way to know and fix the process of thinking.

Most often, my paintings start from a single starting point on the canvas, and end with a multi-layered mass of elements. Random details that have arisen without thinking, spontaneously, just as our thoughts overlap and intertwine with each other.

In this regard, the picture for me is a field for fixing human experience, life choice, internal conflict or consent. These feelings have no form in the material world of things, but in my works they are able to acquire their own image. No one knows what the human process of decision–making, emotions and events looks like - after all, everyone has their own. Therefore, for the viewer, it is abstraction, or rather distraction from familiar forms, that gives freedom to perception and imagination.

Thus, the final outcome of this or that work is initially never known to me, as well as the names of my paintings, which are as spontaneous as possible. For me, this is not an improvisation, rather for me it is the same thought process, decision-making and choice that a person is doomed to make endlessly."
Artur Krivoshein.

SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

• 2022 - St. Petersburg Art Fair "1703", a-s-t-r-a gallery, Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, St. Petersburg
• 2021 — Personal exhibition "Google page 7", 2021, Moscow
• 2021 - "Looking after Earthlings", gallery HERE on Taganka; Exhibition "Fields"; BLAZAR ART
• 2020 - solo exhibition, IMPULSE, 2020, Moscow
• 2020 - Opening/Collection/Plans, New sincerity gallery, 2020, Moscow

Born in 1987 г.

Yuri is a graphic artist and painter with an extraordinary background. He first started in the visual arts at the age of 20, then, after studying at the Moscow School of New Cinema (MSNC) to become a screenwriter and director, he returned to painting and drawing.

Jury's work is a methodological look into the nature of painting; in this he continues the line of abstract painters from America and the German neo-expressionists of the 1960-70s (De Kooning, Baselitz and Kiefer were particularly close). Through them, Samoilove also addresses the question of method, which for him lies in the problem of the relationship between figurative and abstract art. The artist approaches this boundary by means of automatic writing and palimpsest of textures.

In creating abstraction, there is a very great risk of entering the figurative precisely by accident, unintentionally. Automatic writing, removes this problem by making the image identical in meaning and importance to the abstraction. The line is erased, and the unambiguously figurative can use that plastic language in which it is not immediately recognized.

The same with palimpsest: Yuri applies and erases layers of paint, overlaps one with the other, scrapes the drawing with a sharp turn of the brush, and uses spray paint along with acrylics from the tube and pastels. The texture of these works gravitates toward sculptural plasticity, hence the pathos of the material. The material and its molding become no less interesting and important than the image itself.

All this creates works in which the viewer can discover the collision of different problems of the visual, each of which is attractive in its own way: from the limits of figurative painting, automatic and deliberate, to the pressurization of texture as a way of overcoming painting itself.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

• 2022 - "How to disappear completely", a-s-t-r-a gallery, Art Center "Vinzavod"
• 2022 - St. Petersburg Art Fair "1703", a-s-t-r-a gallery, Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, St. Petersburg
• 2021 - blazar young art fair, a-s-t-r-a gallery, Moscow
• 2021 - participation in the international project "Exit from the Black Square", Novosibirsk
• 2021 - Program Art Moscow at 46th Russian Antique Salon, a-s-t-r-a gallery. Gostiny Dvor, Moscow
• 2020 - Participation in the International Contemporary Art Project THE WALL. Kamensk-Uralsky Art Museum, Kamensk-Uralsky
• 2020 - Group exhibition "I have lost track of the world". Curator Irina Shulzhenko. Richter Space, Moscow
• 2019 - Participation in the group exhibition "One, two, three" curated by a-s-t-r-a gallery. CUBE MOSCOW, Moscow
• 2019 - Participation in the international project "Exit from the Black Square. Trekhgornaya manufactory, Moscow
• 2019 - Personal exhibition "Dead Bodybuilder". Richter Space, Moscow
• 2018 - Two guys /One Exhibition (together with American photographer John Hunter Tenney, Free Workshop)
• 2018 - Performance "Seven Gentlemen in Moscow". Osnova Gallery, Moscow
• 2018 - Performance "Round 9". "October, Moscow.
• 2017 - Performance "Sixth Symphony". Pluto, Moscow
• 2017 - "The Garden" (Meditating Dog Experimental Art Studio)