LAB 36 presents a new solo show by Oleg Dou (Moscow, 1983)  with a sample that leaves the square format through portraits of characters of hybrid appearance that provide novel ways to the contemporary iconographic tradition. This exhibition is part of the official program of Artnou 2019. 

Oleg Dou takes from the occidental culture his interest in the portrait. Historically, the perseveration of the memory of one person was tightly related to the moral evaluation of the representation. That is,  traditionally only those who were worthy were portrayed. Instead, Oleg Dou’s works develop the presentation of the body as a subversion object through photo capture and digital retouching. In this way, fictional characters with a pale appearance make us question the concepts of beauty, innocence, and perfection bringing us closer to the aesthetics of the strange.

With an extremely neat job, but with a vital aspect, the artist refutes the perception of what defines innocence and youth. In a world went the artificiality and hyperreality occur daily, Oleg Dou makes us feel that the bizarre is part of the intrinsically human. In an interview with The Zoon Magazine, the young photographer said: “I use the artificial nature of digital photography as a tool to reach the point between opposites such as alive and dead, attractive and disturbing, beautiful and ugly. Thus I’m searching to transcribe the feeling of presence that you get while passing a plastic mannequin”.

In his new series “Reborn” Oleg Dou gives one more step and add new composites elements of his language. Parallel to the portraits, Flora, and fauna are added in the photographic theme as well as still lifes of the classical type. Once again, we also face disturbing elements as the insertion of sexual elements in misplaced or unexpected locations. Each photo captures an artificial beauty created through the representation of simple shapes and vegetable elements that are ruined at the same time. Likewise, we find characters with attributes from the animal kingdom that do not refer to the wild condition of the human being or its brutal dimension but transform the characters of the series in a kind of unusual prints that combines the unreal and disturbing with a new way of iconography mythology.

Oleg Dou studied at the Moscow State Institute of Steel and Alloys (2001-2006) had his first individual exhibition in the gallery Le Simoun de Paris went he has 23 years old. In 2007 was awarded the International Photography Awards and the International Color Awards and in 2009 with the Arte Laguna Art Prize, that deserved the attention of the international artistic community. Since then, his work has been included in numerous individual and collective exhibitions in different institutions of Europe and North America, among them, are Atopía in the Centre de Cultura Contemporània of Barcelona (CCCB) in 2010 or the individual in the Multimedia Art Museum of Moscow in 2012.