Egor Ostrov was born in 1970 in Leningrad. In 1992 he wad accepted to the institute of painting, sculpturing and architecture of Ilya Repin in St.-Petersburg, which he abandonned in one and a half year, having understood the unpersperctiveness of classical education. In 1993 he started to visit lections in the New Academy of Fine arts of Timur Novikov.

In 1994 he has created a cycle of pictures in his authentic "optical art" style devoted to Achilles. In 1996 he has carried out the project "Interaction" in which the pictures of the artist and his friends were projected on Petersburg houses. In 1997 he has recreated by means of computer an installation "Dialogue", based on the panoramical principle, for the exhibition "Office" in Stedelijk, a museum in Amsterdam. In 1998 he has devoted his works to the Renaissance era ("the Pyramid" project). In the works of art based on classical plots, the point of intersection of two parallel lines was transformed to the top of the pyramid looking at the spectator. In 1998 he does a series of photos "Louvre Sculpture". In 2001 he creates paintings based on this photos, in which he connects digital transformations of a photoimage and an optical art approach.

Egor Ostrov researches how the classical image exists on the boundaries of the ХХ-ХХI centuries in hard parameters of the technocratic environment. The basis of his experiments are masterpieces from museums: both paintings and sculptures. In 2007 Ostrov creates a series of pictures called "the Image and the sign", using canvases, raster cliches and special paint for cars. He takes pictures by Leonardo da Vinci, El Greco, Murilo, Ogjusta Domenika Ingres and other artists. The classical plots are materialized on colorful backgrounds. The blinking of the colorful metallic surface adds a new technocratic, inhuman objectivity to this pictures. They are aeriform thanks to the mirroring surface, but very objective, absolutely convincing as an idea of perfection.

In exhibition space the fertile light of Madonnas, in artists intention, compensates the failure of the mythological hero of Phaeton, which has been outcast from heaven. In the history of Phaeton the metaphor of destructive catastrophe which the elements of light can carry is embodied. Madonnas are characters of enlightenment, forces of good fortune. Ostrov offers the modern spectator, who is both far from classical art, and from mythology, pictures finished almost to a state of a formula, to an icon. He is questioning what is the role of a classical image in the modern culture?

In search of the answer to this question Ostrov inherits the traditions of Andy Warhol who implicated Dove corporation logo in Leonardo's "Last Supper". To the spectator of the 1980s Dove's pigeon was carrying a message that we live in a global and democratic environment where corporate logos and masterpieces of art have both turned into trademarks, but - the main thing - something attracts us to these classical images of antiquity and the Renaissance: intuition of immortality.

Egor Ostrov operates s the translator of images from a symbolic language of classical art to the language of signs of the modern technocratic civilization. It would be desirable to compare it to the creators of poetic translations, which always become co-authors of what they translated.

E.Andreeva

2001-2002
Beauty and Eroticism
Gasunie Gallery, Groningen

2000
"Successors of Sparta"
Sinebruhoff Museum, Helsinki

1998
"New positive processes"
The State Russian Museum, St.-Petersburg

1998
"Seven lines on an inch"
Personal exhibition of painting and drawing
"Aidan", gallery, Moscow (Solo)

1998
Exhibition of New Academy of Fine arts
Museum of foreign art, Riga

1997
Kabinet
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

1996
Yegor Ostrov. Paintings
Rotloff, Karlsruhe (Solo)

1996
Metapbern des Entrnecktseins
Aktuelle Kunst ans St. Peterburg
Badischer Kunstverein,
Karlsruhe Kuenstlerhaus

1994-1995
Self-identification
Positions in St. Peterburg
Art from 1970 until Today
Stadtgalerie in Sophienhof, Kiev;
Ifa Gallery, Friedrichstrasse, Berlin;
Haus am Waldsee, Berlin;
The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo,Norway;
The State Art Gallery, Sopot, Poland;
Central Exhibition Hall Manege, St. Peterburg

1994
The Renaissance and Rezistans
The State Russian Museum, St.-Petersburg

Egor Ostrov