Oleg Khvostov was born in Leningrad in 1972. He is a self-taught artist. At the end of the 1990s Oleg joined the Brotherhood of the New Blockheads (Tovarishchestvo Novye Tupye). The New Blockheads gave absurdist performances, inspired by Dadaism and the poetics of the OBEIRU group. Khvostov, however, chose painting as his preferred medium.

Khvostov's art from early in the first decade of the new century leaned toward portraiture, and is marked by brutal expressionism. In a contrasting psychedelic gamma, the artist reinterprets themes from the classics, from Raphael and Leonardo to Masaccio or Goya, revealing the primal, vital impulse in them. The series Memorial to the Leaders and New Leniniana are dedicated to figures in mass culture and politics (Lenin, Hitler, Christ, Marilyn Monroe). His work from these years includes group images of his colleagues in the New Blockheads and multiple self-portraits.

«In the middle of the decade Khvostov had formed his own, individual language and his own painted universe, switching to landscape. This universe is completely smooth and even; there are none of the wrinkles or kinks of the objective world. All of the forms – whether tilled fields, trees, cows at pasture, or colourful, abstract spheres – appear as if crystallized from some chemical process. The volumes increase, becoming round, like bodies.

Khvostov's world is completely erotic, seductive. But this body does not belong to a person who has transformed into a fantastical planetary landscape. The substance that makes up all of the visible landscape forms recalls not a natural, organic material, but rather a polymer. And the cold lighting that evenly fills all of the artist's pictures compels us to believe that it is a virtual reality we see before us, or a video game – none of the elements of which are real.

Oleg is not only a discerning viewer, but also a modern visionary, providing us with digital imagery. The artist freely mixes the contrasting chiaroscuro of Giorgio de Chirico, the geometrism of Fernand Léger, the expression of Frida Kahlo, and the post-Suprematist peasant series of Kazimir Malevich. After this, the resulting image is polished in a theoretical "graphic editor": a multi-layered acrylic painting using various tones imitating the gradient fill of Photoshop.

Khvostov works with modernist primitivism as he would with a ready-made artistic language that has long ago become classic and is accessible for "dissection" in the context of the many centuries of art's history.


Solo exhibitions:

2024 — Soft Landscapes — PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 — Oleg Khvostov: Morphology of primitive. Early works — PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2020 — Olegkhvostov_2020 - PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2018 — Seductive Roundnesses - Navicula Artis Gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia
2016 — Elastic World - Art Dynasty Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
2015 — Cosmos Cows - Art4 Museum, Gridchinhall, Moscow, Russia
2014 — LavAndos - Cultural Alliance, Marat Guelman Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2013 — Lust - AL Gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia
2010 — Absolute Painting - Gridchinhall, Moscow Region, Russia
2010 — The Instinct of Landscape - National Center for Contemporary Arts, St. Petersburg, Russia
2007 — Painting of Oleg Khvostov - Asa-Art Gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia


Selected group exhibitions:

2024 — Exhibition of 5-MAP Nominees — Zaryadye Museum, Moscow, Russia
2024 — 3 х 5 —PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2023 — Function — PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2021 — SOVRISK  — Zaryadye Underground Museam, Moscow, Russia
2019 — First Crew - PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2016 — Actual Russia. Reload - Museum of political history of
Russia, Moscow, Russia
2016 — The New Blockheads - Moscow Museum of Modern
Art, Moscow, Russia
2016 — Cosmic Landing - Norilsk Gallery of Art, Norilsk, Russia
2013 — Navicula Artis - Cultproekt Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2009 — Art about Art - State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
2007 — The Thaw - State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
2006 — Presentation of Marat Guelman's Foundation for Support of Contemporary Art, Artplay Modern Design Center, Moscow, Russia
2006 — Collage in Russia – the 20th Century - State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
2005 — 1st Moscow Contemporary Art Bienniale - Central House of the Artist, Moscow, Russia