Oleg Pospelov
Born in Leningrad in 1975, studied
at the St. Petersburg State Theatre Institute
at the theatre studies department, Since 1999 I have been working as a graphic designer. In 2014 I moved to Tenerife, Spain. I started drawing in 2023.
My daughter had a very odd collection when she was 6 or 7 years old. Scraps of paper, crumpled grocery coupons, disposable gloves from the supermarket, cardboard cups from movie popcorn, napkins from coffee shops, indistinguishable rocks from every trip to the beach, leaves and sticks from every walk in the woods. And a host of other artefacts in the same vein. Throwing away what was, to an adult’s eyes. Rubbish was not to be thrown away. Repetitive things were unique and special to her. It’s funny, at some point this storage of everything unimportant came to an absurdity - there was a suspicious smell in the nursery: it turned out that the memory was also honoured by uneaten pieces of food - crumbs from pies, a bite of an unpalatable apple, shriveled popcorns. For this part of the collection, we had to find another storage format - photos. And the galleries of our phones were filled with still lifes.
The collection, or rather the daughter’s anti-collection, was both sentimental and harsh - it was not “memorable” things, whose weathered beauty would eventually acquire nostalgic value, but things doomed to oblivion, faceless, unnecessary, accidental. The kind of things that most people have.
It is believed that children at this age begin to realise the finitude of existence, the non-eternity of all things. Probably, this keeping of the insignificant was a way for her to fight fear at that moment. The fear that everything you see will one day disappear forever. It’s an important and necessary stage of growing up that you have to go through. And ideally, to come to terms with the idea of the finitude of life and to find other meanings and values.
At that time, the collection, that is, what I saw in it, delighted me and caused sympathy at the same time. Needless to say, you have to go through this many times in life. Personal crises are echoes and repetitions of that first encounter with one’s own limitations and powerlessness against the injustice of the world order.
And in the last two years, what has been happening in the world and in my country has thrown me - and I know it is not only me, but many of us - back to that initial state of childlike helplessness before the absurdity and cruelty of what is stronger than you.
In a strange way, these painful experiences eventually really brought me back to my roots, to my former, “childish” ways of fighting them - to creativity. Because the only thing we can oppose chaos and destruction is creation.
I began to draw as I did when I was a child - without looking back and without reflection - for hours, not drawing something specific, but just drawing - to be, to be in a state of drawing. To immerse oneself in it. Gradually the set of tools and techniques began to expand - collage, chemical experiments (another childhood passion!) -
interaction of colours and paper - with anything. The main condition is that this interaction should result in a new meaning, a new story.
Iodine, ink, soap bubbles, glue, rust - random, not quite independent elements, like those items in my daughter’s collection. Individually and on their own, they at best fulfil their simple function, their direct purpose, which is far from art. However, it so happened that my search for my own language led me to them.
Because, as it turns out, I still refuse to accept the idea of the finitude of existence if it means humility and the realisation of the limits and boundaries of the possible. Because such humility means dividing all things into important and unimportant, useful and useless, valuable and rubbish. And that would be too easy, no?
I think everything that you remember, that you feel, that you notice and what you don’t notice - especially what you don’t notice - is important. Every minute of time is important; it has no price. We often speak of it with mechanical regret. Indeed, what can we do - in the game of time we will all lose.
But hopefully, struggle is not the only way to exist. Putting together a new pattern from fragments of past and present, past and unprecedented is my way of expressing the unfathomable complexity of this world and catching the beauty that helps that complexity endure.
The collection, or rather the daughter’s anti-collection, was both sentimental and harsh - it was not “memorable” things, whose weathered beauty would eventually acquire nostalgic value, but things doomed to oblivion, faceless, unnecessary, accidental. The kind of things that most people have.
It is believed that children at this age begin to realise the finitude of existence, the non-eternity of all things. Probably, this keeping of the insignificant was a way for her to fight fear at that moment. The fear that everything you see will one day disappear forever. It’s an important and necessary stage of growing up that you have to go through. And ideally, to come to terms with the idea of the finitude of life and to find other meanings and values.
At that time, the collection, that is, what I saw in it, delighted me and caused sympathy at the same time. Needless to say, you have to go through this many times in life. Personal crises are echoes and repetitions of that first encounter with one’s own limitations and powerlessness against the injustice of the world order.
And in the last two years, what has been happening in the world and in my country has thrown me - and I know it is not only me, but many of us - back to that initial state of childlike helplessness before the absurdity and cruelty of what is stronger than you.
In a strange way, these painful experiences eventually really brought me back to my roots, to my former, “childish” ways of fighting them - to creativity. Because the only thing we can oppose chaos and destruction is creation.
I began to draw as I did when I was a child - without looking back and without reflection - for hours, not drawing something specific, but just drawing - to be, to be in a state of drawing. To immerse oneself in it. Gradually the set of tools and techniques began to expand - collage, chemical experiments (another childhood passion!) -
interaction of colours and paper - with anything. The main condition is that this interaction should result in a new meaning, a new story.
Iodine, ink, soap bubbles, glue, rust - random, not quite independent elements, like those items in my daughter’s collection. Individually and on their own, they at best fulfil their simple function, their direct purpose, which is far from art. However, it so happened that my search for my own language led me to them.
Because, as it turns out, I still refuse to accept the idea of the finitude of existence if it means humility and the realisation of the limits and boundaries of the possible. Because such humility means dividing all things into important and unimportant, useful and useless, valuable and rubbish. And that would be too easy, no?
I think everything that you remember, that you feel, that you notice and what you don’t notice - especially what you don’t notice - is important. Every minute of time is important; it has no price. We often speak of it with mechanical regret. Indeed, what can we do - in the game of time we will all lose.
But hopefully, struggle is not the only way to exist. Putting together a new pattern from fragments of past and present, past and unprecedented is my way of expressing the unfathomable complexity of this world and catching the beauty that helps that complexity endure.
art by oleg pospelov
