Ilya Golobov | Symbiotic Drift
Ilya Gololobov is a Moscow-based artist working across painting, design, and hybrid media. After two decades as a creative and art director in visual communications, he returned to fine art as a way of rethinking memory and materiality. His practice combines academic training with digital fluency, using strategies of layering, destruction, and reconstruction to reveal how images store affective traces.
Gololobov develops a personal technique of “material alchemy,” where each painting emerges through cycles of construction and rupture. Layers of paint are applied, deformed, and fixed, preserving the “biography” of the work within its surface. The resulting forms hold the tension between control and accident, order and chaos, becoming visual records of time and perception.
Recent presentations include group exhibitions in Moscow and St. Petersburg (2025), marking his return to the field of contemporary art after an internationally recognized career in design. His work has been honored with multiple awards from Promax, Art Directors Club Russia, and other global platforms.
Lilac Cosmos, 2025, 50 × 72.8 in acrylic, banner fabric
Closing My Eyes, 2025, 82.7 × 51.2 in acrylic, metallic pigment, banner fabric
Courtesy of the artist
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