Oleg Ustinov (b. 1984) is a contemporary artist working across painting, drawing and objects. In 2006 he co-founded the art group “Zhaba i chort” (The Toad and the Devil), in 2011 he entered the Rodchenko School in Moscow and graduated in 2014. He later took part in the main project of the 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art and in a group exhibition at M HKA in Antwerp. The Don Foundation collection holds 5 works from the artist’s early period; estimates for the lots are from 360 to 540 $.
Oleg Ustinov was born in 1984 in Rostov-on-Don. Before moving to Moscow he studied privately: conceptual thinking with the designer Sergei Nomerkov, academic drawing and painting with the nonconformist artist Vadim Makhnitsky. In 2006 he co-founded the art group “Zhaba i chort”, whose work was built on a critique of consumer society: the group issued provocative postcards and staged more than ten exhibitions in non-museum spaces – abandoned bunkers, dive bars, luxury fabric showrooms. In 2011 Ustinov entered the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, studied in the workshop of Sergei Bratkov and graduated in 2014, defending what Kommersant and Winzavod describe as the school’s first painting diploma project. He also enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
The Don Foundation collection holds 5 works by Oleg Ustinov, all of them listed under painting. They date from 2009 and 2010, are executed in mixed media on cardboard and measure 70 × 100 cm; they include “Line of Fire”, “Spring” and “Wounds of Summer”. Chronologically they belong to the early period that preceded his Moscow studies: they were made before he entered the Rodchenko School, in the years when he was a member of “Zhaba i chort”. The exhibition history of these works is not known, and we do not claim for them a part in the artist’s better-known projects or a place in his later series. Each lot record states the artist, title, year, medium and dimensions. The same works also appear in the contemporary art selection.
Ustinov works in painting, drawing, collage, objects, multimedia and sound; in painting he keeps up a dialogue with modernism and explores the possibilities of non-objective art. The hoax is his method: invented authors, characters and mock campaigns that force the viewer to check what is actually in front of them. His later work is recognisable by the alternation of hand drawing and machine printing on a single canvas, which the artist marks with the formula 4d/4p(+p); the same body of work includes the series “Liquid Geometry”, “IDM” and “Caustic Windows”. All of them date from 2013 onwards and therefore have no direct bearing on the 2009 and 2010 works in this section: these are separate stages in the artist’s work. None of the series listed above are represented in the Don Foundation collection.
His solo exhibition “Truby goryat” (“The Pipes Are Burning”) was held in 2012 within the Start project at Winzavod in Moscow, and in 2013 the show “IDM” was presented at the 16th line gallery in Rostov-on-Don. In 2014 Ustinov took part in “Time to Dream”, the main project of the 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (curated by David Elliott, Museum of Moscow, 26 June – 10 August 2014), and in the international group exhibition “Don’t You Know Who I Am? – Art After Identity Politics” at M HKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (curated by Anders Kreuger and Nav Haq). In 2018 the solo exhibition “Oleg Ustinov and Others” was held at VLADEY Space at Winzavod; part of the work shown there was made during a residency of the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation. In his home city the artist founded the pop-up gallery llil.space, which hosted his own exhibitions in 2018 and 2021 among others.
The Don Foundation is based in Rostov-on-Don and holds online sales: bidding is open from any city once you have registered, free of charge. The price range for the works by Oleg Ustinov in the collection is from 360 to 540 $; these are estimates, and the final price is decided in the bidding. The lots can be viewed in the catalogue and the dates of forthcoming sales in the auctions section. Registration and bidding are explained in the buy a painting section, and the terms for consigning works in the sell a painting section. What a preliminary valuation requires is listed in the same section.
