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Exhibitions:

SPBGUTD Saint-Petersburg state university, Russia
Saimaa University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Libera università di Bolzano, Italy
Universität der Künste Berlin, Germany

Education:

Evgeny Starov is an artist developing his own visual language at the intersection of disciplines, where street expression enters into dialogue with academic systems. His practice evolves between spontaneous gesture and deliberate structure, between the street surface and the canvas space.

His path begins in urban subculture: skateboarding, early tags, visual traces on walls—moments when the city became both arena and carrier of expression. This primary visual instinct was further shaped at universities in Russia and across Europe, where he studied graphic design, typography, and calligraphy—not as decorative forms, but as systems of thought: strict, rhythmic, rational.

A turning point came with the rejection of distance between body and surface: a return to gesture—tag, trace, action. Contrary to the typical trajectory “from street to gallery,” Evgeny’s path moves in reverse: from design thinking to urban script, from academic precision to raw expression. His writing is not spontaneity, but knowledge manifested in gesture. He uses the trace as a building block, the urban environment as artistic material, and the city itself as an equal participant in the process. Evgeny’s works emerge from specific contexts: they do not record events, but their imprints; they do not document the past, but embed themselves in the present—fleeting, fragmented, fragile. His canvases are not illustrations, but personal archives of time, rhythm, the breath of streets, and the stories hidden in their layers.

He works with what disappears: posters, inscriptions, visual fragments of the urban environment. Translating the ephemeral into the durable, and the chaotic into system, Evgeny builds a language in which loss becomes a point of assembly, and the unnoticed—a subject of observation. He lives and works in Saint Petersburg, regularly building a dialogue with the European and international context.

Bio:

An artist whose practice is less about gesture than about the ritual of fixation. He does not create images — he extracts them. From the urban surface, from the city's memory, from the vanishing present. His materials are paper, concrete, typography, trace, stains, and noise. His language is a visual palimpsest, where each work becomes a space of accumulation, forgetting, and return. In his world, there is no clear boundary between art and life, between a poster and an image, between the street and the archive. He works with what usually disappears: with visual debris, with everyday background, with what remains “out of frame.” And he turns it into something eternal — as if placing a mark: “this was.” There is no romanticization of decay here, no sentimentality. On the contrary — cold precision, respect for texture, an almost museological attention to every element. His canvases are like imprints of time: multilayered, fragile, yet full of life and history. This is not decoration, nor manifesto. It is — testimony.

The artist uses found elements of the urban environment: posters, textures, letterforms, fragments of typography. But this is not an act of rebellion — it is an act of preservation. Through decomposition, through chaos, through slowing down, he captures the moment — and transforms it into a space of perception. His canvases do not decorate — they document. And they invite not answers, but pause.

He glorifies neither destruction nor order — he accepts both as the essence of the present. This is not an attempt to stop time, but rather to emphasize its fluidity. He redirects the gaze — toward what is usually overlooked. This is art for those who know how to read between the lines. Who sense the city’s vibration even in silence. Who understand that beauty may not be obvious, and what matters may not be loud. He works with what is usually lost — and makes it eternal. This is not protest. This is preservation. Perhaps, in this, lies the true luxury of our time

STATEMENT:

For commercial projects or to purchase original canvases, please fill out the from below, or use direct email: starov.artist@gmail.com

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