"Hermitage" Series

Olga Komarova-Tobreluts is a pioneer of animation and computer graphics in St. Petersburg art: for five years now she has been actively performing in the field of electronic art, and new means of expression are quite reflexively used by her to assert her own poetics. This poetics is based on the dialectic of High and Low academicism: a constant balancing act between high classical patterns and grassroots, kitschy, and gaudy patterns. In this regard, Tobreluts belongs to the St. Petersburg neo-academic line, at the same time, it is so independent that it allows itself to go beyond the boundaries of the line drawn by Timur Novikov. The main subject of her art is the very idea of representation as such, embodied in the visualization of the very idea of fitting. <...> The quality of beauty is absolutely not important, the only thing necessary is the desire to personify, humanize beauty. This aspiration requires a certain magic crystal — and Tobreluts creates just such a magic glass: its computer backgrounds acquire a specific electronic spatiality — they are overgrown with a light-air environment or promising riddles.

Alexander Borovsky