CONTACT
To see more examples of my commercial work please download the VISUAL PORTFOLIO
To commission a portrait please download the PORTRAIT PRESENTATION
Please email or call with any questions about paintings, murals, teaching etc.
yuri@yurileonov.com
917 693 2576
All images are copyright Yuri Leonov 2024
All rights reserved
BIO
Born in St Petersburg, Russia in 1987 I pursued art from a young age, taking classes to build a foundation based on primarily classical knowledge. I have enjoyed the contrast of living in one of the major cultural centers of Europe, home to world heritage sites, immense museums, and expansive architecture, with a rural setting of a rustic, quaint country house during the summer. In adolescence I moved to New York City, the capital of modern art, inspiring me to expand my creative horizons. I attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, subsequently receiving my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in 2011. Since graduating, I have been living in Brooklyn, New York where I was cultivating, and teaching a life model drawing class, along with other courses, in collaboration with BK Society of Draftsman. Most recently was employed as a mural painter by Seen Outdoor Media, previously worked in that position for Overall Murals, and Evergreene Architectural Arts. I Assisted an Interior decorator at Kay Cha Studio, was an art handler at Marlborough Gallery, Derek Eller Gallery and others, served as a studio assistant for a fine artist Sean Mellyn, and a Gallery assistant for Dacia Gallery and others.
Currently residing in Fort Edward, Upstate New York, most recently has been working as Program and Exhibitions Coordinator at Saratoga Arts Community Arts Center.
I have always been interested in the relationship between nature’s course and the constant attempts by human beings to influence it. My art for the last fifteen years has become much more immersed in the subject, after being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, which has forced me to deal with human limitations first hand. Living with a constant dependency on recently man-made advancements I find myself wondering what is truly natural and what is not. At times these questions would channel into a place of internal struggle, and become correlated with the juxtaposition of strength and weakness on physical and emotional levels. Thus my art is all connected, in one way or another, to the relationship of man, nature, and technology. In the current climate of looking outward, history and culture commentary, along with formal analysis my varied and diverse approach to making work tends to rather look inwards, as a reflective personal response resulting in an ethereal, poetic effect.
My work encompasses small and large scale drawings and paintings, individual, but more commonly in series, connected not only aesthetically but through technical execution, dictated by the concept of each project. Tapping within the subconscious allows me to concentrate on the ever persisting yet unresolved, permanent, timeless issues, attempting to avoid cliches and trends of the new as well as the repetition and redundancies of the old. My artwork is oftentimes conceived in series to generate an immersive effect, and emulate an authentic experience through prolonged engagement with the shape shifting, evolving world I construct. The worldbuilding involves implication of ancient philosophy, modern scientific theory, human and art history on my impressions of the surrounding environment of our contemporary life. Marrying technical precision, refined execution built on years of study with intuative, primitive, experimental mark making reveals a way for the audience to enter the work through unusual, surprising, and varying angles, avoiding presumptions and misconceptions.
Core elements of being honest and sincere about my reflections remain consistent, while the methodology of my work evolves from one series to the next. After the subject matter arises, materials and forms are determined, so that the inquiry and production of a body of work can occur. The new elements emerging in this work lead into the next, like links in the chain, binding the components to establish a larger picture, echoing the process of organic evolution. Continual integration of various specific materials, explicit textures and colors, unique mark making techniques, developed through extensive investigation, is successively expanded and is carried over into my current work. Bridging scientific thesis with personal experiences, applying a biological perspective to life figure drawing, embodying a physical object with an emotional response all propose the conception that drives the balancing act of narrative vs abstraction, classical technique vs avant garde deliberation, calculated vs chaotic methodology. I am particular with the images being utilized, requiring specific content, and precise composition, thusly almost exclusively using my own deliberately taken photographs for reference.
SOLO/TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2013
Divided Line, Muchmore's, Brooklyn, NY
Ontological, Skylight Gallery, New York, NY
2011
Remain, White Rabbit, New York, NY
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2015
The Happening 3, Cloud City, Brooklyn, NY
Show #1, Chi Chi Factory, Brooklyn, NY
Realms of the Unreal, Gristle Tattoo, Brooklyn, NY
Litha Symphony Orchestra Fundraiser Gala, Church of the Holy Apostles, New York, NY
2014
The Happening 2, Gristle Tattoo, Brooklyn, NY
You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone, Myplasticheart, New York, NY
Elusive Key, Gristle Tattoo, Brooklyn, NY
Hypercritical, Littlefield, Brooklyn, NY
2013
Perepeteia II, Skylight Gallery, New York, NY
Kaleidoscope, Muchmore's, Brooklyn, NY
The Happening, Skylight Gallery, New York, NY
Single Fare 3, RH Gallery, New York, NY
2012
Black Cube Collective Launch,Art’s complex, gallery 1, Edinburgh, UK
Signs of the Apocalypse, Myplasticheart, New York, NY
Society of Illustrators Student Competition Exhibition, New York, NY
69th Armory: Fountain Art Fair (with Dacia Gallery), New York, NY
Love and Other Drugs, Grit N Glory, New York, NY
Hyperboreans, Dacia Gallery, New York, NY
2011
Black Sheep, AC Gears, New York, NY
Plexus, Dacia Gallery, New York, NY
Open Studios, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
Efflorescence, Dacia Gallery, New York, NY
Peripeteia I, White Rabbit, New York, NY
2010
Social, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
Classical Myths Transformed, Visual Arts Gallery, New York, NY