Gosha Ostretsov - Love for electricity

TMproject proudly presents Love for Electricity, the first solo show by Georgii Ostretsov in Switzerland. Georgii “Gosha” Ostretsov (Moscow, 1967-) is a major post-Soviet Russian artist and one of the most important painters of his generation. His pictorial universe is an explosive mix of Pop figuration and gestural abstraction largely inspired by comics and science fiction, both condemned as decadent and bourgeois art in the USSR. His large canvases are full of luscious pinups and mad scientists who hatch incredible artistic-political plots on a neo-constructivist Pop Art background. After graduating from the Bolshoi Theatre Art School, he moved to Paris in 1988. There he worked as a fashion designer for Castelbajac while presenting his first performances. In 1998, he returned to Moscow where he is still living and working. Since then, paintings, sculptures, cavernous installations and hectic performances have been following each other in a broad thematic project known as The New Government. Gosha Ostretsov represented Russia at the 2009 Venice Biennale in the Victory over the Future exhibition, with Pavel Pepperstein and Andrei Molodkin among others. For TMproject, he created a new character, an anti-superhero, a supercharged mutant electrician whose adventures take place on large size acrylic and mixed media canvases, with the addition of various electrical appliances.

Cyril Kerr