Oleg Dou

Born on 19 August 1983 in Moscow, Russia. Lives and works in Moscow.

“My artistic practice explores the boundaries of photography beyond traditional representation or documentary form. My analogue photograms, or ‘light paintings’, are created using a technique developed over the years through experimentation.”

The family environment in which Oleg Dou grew up, marked by artistic influences, inspired his career path and guided his choice to study design. But the artist soon preferred photography and digital retouching to design. He was encouraged in this by the positive response to his photographic work.

His artistic practice grew out of his fascination with pre-Renaissance Italian portraits and his desire to blend modern images and old paintings in his inspirational images. Although he models creatures by successive digital retouching of photographic portraits, the artist cannot be likened to a demiurge, since he takes life away from them rather than breathing it into them. His creative endeavour consists of adding layers that appear as retrenchments, purifying and reducing their features. The absence of roughness in the faces, rendered by the smoothing operation, highlights the eyes, which seem, through their intense fixation, to challenge the viewer and prevent him or her from turning away.

Self-taught, Oleg DOU is today the most striking Russian artist of his generation. His publications include: ARTPRESS (France), Libération (France), Figaro (France), Next Level (UK), After Capture (USA), ARTEnews (Belgium), Artchronica (Russia), Camera Arts (USA), Adbusters magazine ( Canada), Space magazine (USA), FS magazine (Brazil), Junge_Kunst (Germany), AZART Photo (portfolio, France), Snap (portfolio, UK), CITIZEN K (Russia), Tredsetter (portfolio, Turkey), LIMPRONOCABLE ( portfolio, France), SOON (portfolio, France), Le Monde2 (portfolio, France), PHOTO (France), ALL (portfolio, France) “Dark Inspirations, Art & Design” (Ed. Victionnary, 2010, Hong Kong), “Frozen Dream, contemporary art from Russia” (Ed. TransGlobe Publishing and Thames & Hudson, 2011).

His work can be found in private collections such as the Fondation Francès, C-Collection (Matthias Camenzind), the Institut culturel Bernard Magrez, the Samawi Collection, the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation, the Fundació de l’Art Contemporain (Paris) and the Fundació de l’Art Contemporain (Paris). Kaminsky Family Foundation, the Fundació Vila Casas and others.

(Source : MOB – ART STUDIO)