I: My artistic journey began around ten years ago as part of the three-person art collective Cosi o Cosa. One of the members was don't Buy. Like many young artists, we were heavily influenced by Basquiat and worked mainly with expressive painting.
We made large collaborative works, first on fibreboard using cheap construction paints because that was all we could afford as students. Later, we moved on to canvas and acrylics. As we became more involved in the contemporary art scene, we organised two exhibitions of our work: one in our hometown and another in Moscow's Sfera Foundation.

Eventually, the collective broke up, and each of us went our own way. Around the same time, I was given a studio by the Artists' Union. That's where I met Daria Rastunina. We had neighbouring studios and quickly became friends. The previous tenant had left behind canvases, paints and other materials, which was how I first started working seriously with oil paint.

I spent a lot of time experimenting in that studio. I made objects, created graphic works, and tried different media and approaches. After a while, though, I felt I was spreading myself too thin and wanted to focus on one thing. In the end, I chose painting and gradually began developing my own visual language.

I entered the NFT space in 2022. That's when I started making more work on the computer and gradually moved towards a digital practice, although I only began to feel truly confident in it about two years ago. My first experiments go back to 2018, when I started working in Photoshop.

I: No, I wouldn't say I've completely moved into digital art. It's more that I'm going through a particular phase right now. I'm still very interested in painting and have ideas for new works, but at the moment, I simply don't have enough time for it. Working digitally is much faster, so that's where most of my attention goes for now. I hope I'll be able to return to painting soon and finally realise some of the ideas I've been carrying around for a while.

I: I'd say it moves in both directions. Many ideas first emerge in a digital environment, but then I become curious to see how they work in painting. These particular works actually started as digital images before being translated onto canvas. I was interested in seeing how the same image changes when pixels are replaced by paint, texture and the physicality of the surface itself. For me, it's less about moving from one medium to another and more about exploring the same visual language across different media.

I: Because I come from a painting background, my approach to digital media is deeply shaped by that experience. Digital painting is far more flexible. You can return to previous stages, test different solutions, and alter the composition, colour, or form without risking ruining the work. In traditional painting, many decisions feel more final, whereas the digital process remains open for much longer.

I am largely self-taught and never attended an academic art school. I often found myself running up against gaps in my knowledge or technical skills. Digital tools have given me a way to be more versatile and to expand what I can do as an artist.

I use AI as a supporting tool. Sometimes it helps me discover unexpected visual possibilities or provides a starting point for a work. But after that, I always rework the image myself — adjusting the composition, colour, and texture. It is important to me that the final work remains the result of my own artistic decisions rather than a simple act of generation.

Working with painting in a digital format felt new and exciting to me. In a sense, digital tools became a logical extension of my practice. They allowed me to continue my painterly investigations while working with a different set of instruments and possibilities, and through them, I could search for new solutions.

Over time, I became increasingly interested in a particular question: what can figurative painting look like when it is created on a computer? For me, this became a form of research. Can a digital image retain a sense of painterliness, and how does the language of representation change in the process? I began to see the computer not simply as a technical tool, but as another environment in which painting can exist and evolve.

I: I think the image has become less about capturing a specific form and more about the process of its formation. In painting, an image is often understood as a finished result, whereas in a digital environment, it can remain open to change for much longer.

This has also influenced the way I work with the figure. I'm less interested in depicting a person as a fixed character and more interested in a state of constant transformation. That's why the figures in my work often seem suspended between different states, as if they're simultaneously coming together and falling apart.

In that sense, digital tools have given me more than just a new medium to work with. They've changed the way I think about the image itself. Instead of something static and fixed, it becomes a process—something that is always in the process of becoming rather than a final, settled form.

I: One thing I often encounter is that a digital work can exist in an infinite number of versions. Because of that, one of the most important skills is knowing when to stop and accept that the work is finished. In a way, digital practice can require even more discipline than traditional painting.

Of course, there are also technical limitations: resolution, screens, software, and algorithms. But what interests me most isn't the technical side itself. I'm more interested in how these conditions shape artistic thinking. Sometimes limitations lead you to solutions that would never emerge in a situation of complete freedom.

Only recently have I begun to understand what it means to "think through the screen". For a long time, I tried to conceal what I saw as imperfections in my images — low resolution, compression artefacts, and other digital traces. They seemed unprofessional to me. Now I see them differently. These characteristics are part of the condition of the digital environment itself, and recognising that has opened up entirely new ways of thinking about digital art.

I: Yes, to some extent. What interests me about dithering is that it carries a visible trace of the digital environment. I used to see things like this as technical flaws that needed to be hidden. Now I'm interested in working with them as part of the material itself.

Dithering allows me to reveal the image as something that exists within digital space—unstable, limited, yet constantly capable of being reassembled. For me, it's not so much about nostalgia for early computer graphics as it is about trying to speak the language of the digital medium itself, rather than simply using digital tools to imitate something else.

I: I think the human figure remains both the most complex and the most immediately recognisable visual form. We constantly interpret ourselves through the body, even when we're dealing with inner states.

At the same time, I'm less interested in the person as a character or a specific identity than in the figure as a carrier of experience. Sometimes it becomes almost abstract, opening up questions of perception, memory, anxiety, and transformation.

Even when an image is heavily distorted, viewers still look for a human presence within it, and I find that tension very interesting.

I: I'm more interested in the experience of being alone with one's own perception. That can be read as loneliness, but for me it's something broader than that.

Most of the time, we exist within our own inner world, even when we're surrounded by other people. I'm interested in exploring the space between the external world and inner experience. That's why the figures in my work often inhabit ambiguous environments that feel more like mental spaces than real places.

I: I don't think it's really about Bacon himself. Rather, he developed a very compelling way of using the figure to speak about the instability of human experience.

At the same time, it seems to me that digital painting is gradually moving beyond that influence. Artists are becoming increasingly interested in perception, algorithms, the specific conditions of the digital environment, and the different ways images can exist and evolve.

That said, the emotionally distorted figure remains a very direct and accessible way of communicating with viewers. It's an immediate visual language, which is probably why it continues to be so widespread.

I: It was important for me to bring together artists with very different approaches to image-making. Some work in ways that are close to traditional painting, while others use generative processes or explore the influence of algorithms and artificial intelligence.

What unites them is not the tool itself, but their relationship to the image. I was interested in artists who don't simply use digital technologies, but actively reflect on what those technologies mean for the image and for artistic practice.

In different ways, each of the artists in the exhibition responds to the same question: what happens to painterly thinking in a digital environment?

I: I see digital painting as a distinct medium, but it's now so broad and diverse that it no longer makes sense to speak of it as a single style. If there is something that connects artists working in this field, it isn't a shared visual language but a shared context.

The digital environment brings its own set of conditions. Screens, pixels, interfaces, software, algorithms, and modes of distribution all become part of the artistic process. Just as the material qualities of canvas and paint shape traditional painting, the digital environment shapes the way images are produced and experienced today.

What interests me most, however, is not the question of tools but the way digital technologies change how we think about images in the first place. That's why I see digital painting not as a unified style but as a broad field of practices connected by a shared environment.