Artist Ilya Gololobov official website. Contemporary art and commissions


About Me

I am a multidisciplinary designer, art director, and artist.

I trained as a graphic and advertising designer. This background shaped my interest in moving beyond pure form toward a visual language that goes beyond commercial expressiveness.

In my artistic practice, I explore memory and the materiality of the imprint. I am fascinated by how a digital trace can become physical — and how a physical thing can become digital.

I work in a hybrid technique, combining painting, graphics, and printmaking. Using generative algorithms, I fill visual fields with lost or distorted components. My own experience meets the problem of fixation and inevitable distortion. I seek the point where the artist’s gesture meets the randomness of the algorithm.


Method

The perfection of digital tools becomes a medium where control gives way to the exploration of affective traces. I am drawn to unpredictability: familiar images, integrated into abstraction, transform into dissipative structures. The result cannot be predicted; the work is finished when the balance between chance and control feels right.

An academic background in painting, followed by a break from art for over 20 years, formed the foundation of this approach — not as a rupture, but as a complex evolution. My return to art was a response to pivotal social events, turning my design skills into a tool for creating rhizomatic visual narratives.

My work is not a rejection of the past, but its reinterpretation: a shift from harmony toward a living, unfinished process.

Exhibitions  

2025–2026 Group Exhibition “The Great Disorder”, HSE Art Gallery (Moscow)

2025 Group International Online Exhibition “Symbiotic Drift

2025 Group Exhibition-Study “Portrait of a New Wave Collector”, a—s—t—r—a Gallery (Moscow)

2025 Group International Online Exhibition “Penetration”

2025 Group Graphic Art Exhibition “Imprints”, Sol Gallery (Moscow)



Education   

1998 — 2000 Creative Workshop of Architect A.O. Vaganov 

1997 — 1999 Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University, Department of Graphic Design 

1991 — 1993 Creative Workshop of V.V. Gololobov 

1989 — 1993 Tver Art College named after A.G. Venetsianov


Design Awards

2024 MediaBrand | Best Program Design | Silver

2023 MediaBrand | Best Program Design | Silver

2022 MediaBrand | Best Program Design | Gold

2019 MediaBrand | Best Branded and Promotional Merchandise | Gold

2018 Promax BDA Global Excellence Promotion Marketing and Design Awards: Total Package Art Direction and design: Channel image, On-Air only | Bronze 

2013 Promax BDA Global Excellence design Awards Image Promo | Gold

2012 Promax BDA Global Excellence design Awards Promo campaign design | Gold

2010 Promax & BDA World Los Angeles. Print. Logo | Silver

2009 Ppomax & BDA World New York. Print. Packaging | Silver

2008 Ppomax & BDA World New York. On-Air Typography | Silver 

2006 Promax & BDA International New York. Print. Packaging | Silver

2005 Promax & BDA International New York. Logo | Gold

2005 Art Directors Club Russia | Gold. Graphic design of Corporate Identity



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