Andrej Barov

I am a photographic artist and the originator of Brain Art — work built on what neuroscience tells us about how images
take hold of us.
I do not photograph what the eye sees. I work from what cultural memory holds: motifs from media and consumer culture,
fragments of art history, historical allusions. These I put through a digital process of abstraction until the source motif is
no longer recognisable, and what remains is the perceptual residue — colour freed from the object it belonged to. The
images feel familiar before they are understood. That déjà-vu is the subject.
My concern is not that digital images can be manipulated. It is the power every image holds over the person looking at it,
and the unconscious assumptions we bring to the act of seeing. I work in series. Each one takes a single fault line of
contemporary life — political, social, technological — and builds an image world around it. The method is closer to a
controlled experiment than to intuition: one principle, fixed, applied again and again across different motifs.
The central result of this research was shown in 2005 at the Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke in Munich. Colour
Matrix was conceived with the museum’s director Ingeborg Kader, and Brian Eno cre...

1976–1981 Academy of Theatre, Music and Film, Leningrad — Theatre Studies and Art History (Diploma)
1981–1988 Deputy Head of Production, Lenfilm Studios, Leningrad
1988 emigrated to Germany
since 1990 independent artistic practice as a photographer; lives and works in Munich
1994 taught at the New Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
since 1991 Member, BFF (Association of Freelance Photographers, Germany)
since 2004 Member, DGPh (German Photographic Association)

2005 — COLOUR MATRIX
Andrej Barov / Brian Eno. Special exhibition, Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke, Munich. Conceived with Ingeborg
Kader; sound installation by Brian Eno.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2012 Wollust des Untergangs, Thomas Mann Museum, Lübeck; Literaturhaus, Munich
2009 born in UdSSR, Federal Foreign Office, Berlin
2008 256, special exhibition for the XXIX Olympic Games, Beijing
2007 Durstlöscher (Thirst Quencher), Artforum, Berlin
2007 Brain Art, Burda Yukom, Munich
2006 Essence, Jörg Heitsch Galerie, Munich
2006 Colours of Fragrance, Galerie 23m², Aachen
2004 Perceptions, Kodak / photokina, Cologne
2004 Art Drinks in the City, Cologne (Art Cologne)
2003 Digital Album, Galerie Wild, Frankfurt am Main
2003 My Favourite Films, Galerie Benninger, Cologne
2003 Wahrnehmungen, Galerie Andrea Brenner, Düsseldorf
2003 Galerie Digital Art, Frankfurt am Main
2001 Raumdefinitionen, Galerie Benninger, Cologne
2000 Erbgut, Galerie Benninger, Cologne
1999 Galerie Goethe 53, City of Munich, Department of Cultural Affairs
1999 Delikatessen, Galerie Benninger, Cologne
1995 Museum of the New Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
1993 Graphik-Photo-Art-Galerie, Munich
1991 Galerie Fischinger, Stuttgart; Galerie Grießhaber, Tübi...