Roman Korovin

Roman Korovin (1973)

Defined by the poetics of the anti-sublime, Roman Korovin’s works are created as witty and anecdotal series of episodes, most often grouped in diptychs or triptychs, thus creating new meanings in mutual interaction. His photography, drawing, video and installation are characterized by precise observation, visual paradoxes and humor about ordinary objects and everyday episodes. Roman Korovin’s painting, however, leads us to reflect on the painting itself - the chiaroscuro, contrasts, semi-tones - where the depicted object can be brought to abstraction. His painting shines quietly with a particular picturesque sensuality, simplicity and truthfulness. Melting snow, autumn leaves, white flower, duck in flight, wind, glass, soap holder, birch tree and its shadow, road between a pine tree and a bush...  these are the modest heroes of Roman Korovin’s stories about painting, inviting to a meditation on timeless themes, while retaining artist’s philosophical tendency to “joke”.
“Art becomes a miracle, for it is your tool, your practice. Some meditate, others paint. Some sing, yet others pray to God. In fact, when I paint, I feel as if I have come to a confession. When the pastor absolves your sins, it feels as if you have just finished a painting.” (Roman Korovin)

“The carnevalesque is the very essence of Korovin’s creative actions, with his tendency to subject to risorial understatement and evertion everything that could have hierarchically vertical or morally and aesthetically normative authority.” (Viktor Misiano)

Roman Korovin (1973) has graduated from the department of Graphic Art at the Art Academy of Latvia (1997). He participates in exhibitions since 1991. In collaboration with curators such as Viktor Misiano, Mark Gisborn, Harald Szeemann, Kristin Dittrich, Alise Tifentala, Daiga Rudzate, Iliana Veinberga, Solvita Krese, Ieva Kalnina and others, Roman Korovin’s artworks have been exhibited in many European countries as well as USA.
Roman Korovin has been nominated for the Purvitis Award several times – in 2018, 2009, and 2008. In 2006 and 2007 he received the Latvian Annual Photography Award. His artworks are in collections of Latvian National Museum of Art and Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, as well as in private collections in Europe and the USA.