Costa Gorelov

Costa Gorelov was born in Moscow in 1993 and continues to live and work in Moscow. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Television and Radio Broadcasting, graduating in Film Directing (Cinema). In his work Costa explores people’s emotional and psychological states, often depicting them through the interactions of a figure with different spaces, objects and fashion items. Fashion, in particular, is paramount to his self-expression. It is also a symbol linking epochs, times, and traditions.

Gorelov grew up in the tradition of the North German Renaissance. German music, literature, painting, culture, and language have greatly influenced him, and played a key role in the formation of his style. The basic principles he uses when creating his paintings are those of the Baroque, the Renaissance, and interior design. Architecture plays a primary role in his art, in particular its basis upon stone and the golden ratio. Gorelov strives to incorporate elements of Gothic and Baroque architecture into the everyday life of his characters through handbags and accessories that carry the DNA of this architectural heritage. He wants to show that despite changes in trends and different eras, the fundamental things are unshakable and unchanging.

Costa Gorel

Black Friday, 2021

Óleo sobre lienzo (díptico)

240 x 260cm

Interview

What inspires you when creating? I’m always inspired by something new. I can be inspired by something that I might not have been paying attention to yesterday and it's always unpredictable for me. Constant inspiration is always architecture, music, literature, art, humor, interior design, fashion, and of course, my everyday bible is Virginia Wolf.

What are you working on recently? Now I’m working on the project for Dr. Robot Gallery, on a series of big format paintings. One of them is 3 x 4 meters high and is dedicated to Moscow’s subway. I’m going to create here a special tension between characters and space.

Tell us about your creative process. I can plan painting for a long time and I can make a lot of sketches but end up with something completely different on the painting. I always try to create my own, world my own stories using videos or something else, but painting is the only point where I feel I belong and it’s the main foundation of my life. I’m very happy and beyond joy when I’m painting.

Costa Gorel

Danube, 2020

Oleo sobre lienzo (díptico)

100 x 82cm

Are you participating for the first time in the fair? What do you expect from Art Madrid? I expect to enjoy the fair, to get to know new names new works and my work to become more recognizable. And of course, you always expect sunshine and warmth from Madrid.

You grew up surrounded by the tradition of North German renaissance culture. How can we see this influence in your work? This influence can be traced back to the fact that I always use graphics in my paintings and that I have always been inspired by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Gustav Klimt, and so many others. I always tried to convey an extremely personal sense of understanding of the world with its duality, changeability and complexity. It’s very typical and important to me to connect the fashion and interior items with the characters and compositions. Yes, my characters are romantic

Fashion and nudity are two elements very present in your work, are both the mirror to explore people's feelings and expression in your process? I use nudity as a symbol, as a device to show the vulnerability and certain fabulousness and at the same time the strangeness of characters. Fashion is the constant concrete of history like stone with which modernity is linked to primitive times. My characters are hiding behind fashion and architecture because they want to protect themselves. In this way, I’m trying to express human feelings like insecurity, melancholy, and joy.

Costa Gorel

Personal Icon, 2021

Oil on canvas

40 x 50cm

Costa Gorelov participates in Art Madrid with Dr. Robot Gallery, along together with Katya Sheglova y Vova Perkin.

ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. PERFORMANCE CYCLE X ART MADRID'26

Art Madrid, committed to creating a discursive platform for artists working within the field of performance and action art, presents Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a proposal inspired by Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997).

The project unfolds within a theoretical framework that directly engages with these premises, conceiving social interaction as a stage of carefully modulated performances designed to influence others’ perceptions. Goffman argues that individuals deploy both verbal and involuntary expressions to guide the interpretation of their behavior, sustaining roles and façades that define the situation for those who observe.

The body — the first territory of all representation — precedes both word and learned gesture. Human experience, conscious and unconscious alike, is inscribed within it. Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda departs from this premise: representation inhabits existence itself, and life, understood as a succession of representations, transforms the body into a space of constant negotiation over who we are. In this passage, boundaries blur; the individual opens toward the collective, and the ephemeral acquires symbolic dimension. By inhabiting this interstice, performance simultaneously reveals the fragility of identity and the strength that emerges from encounter with others.

PERFORMANCE: ALTA FACTURA. BY COLECTIVO LA BURRA NEGRA

March 4 | 7:00 PM. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.

"Discipline for Power.” Performance by La Burra Negra for Displacement of the Congress of Deputies by Roger Bernat. 2025.

Alta Factura subverts the conventional structure of the fashion runway to foreground the often-invisible processes that underpin artistic production. Through a series of conceptual textile works, the performance draws attention to the discipline of craft and the artist’s vulnerability, ultimately revealing those seams typically consigned to the margins, behind the scenes.

Colectivo La Burra Negra.

ABOUT EL COLECTIVO LA BURRA NEGRA

La Burra Negra is a nomadic performance art collective based in Málaga, founded in 2024 following its first residency in Totalán. The group is self-managed by Ascensión Soto Fernández, Gabriela Feldman de la Rocha, Sasha Camila Falcke, Sara Gema Domínguez Castillo, Sofía Barco Sánchez, and Regina Lagos González—six artists from diverse backgrounds and trajectories who met at the Hospital de Artistas at La Juan Gallery.

The collective brings together practitioners working across jewelry, painting, the performing arts, music, dance, cultural mediation, and arts management. Its activities include an annual residency in Totalán, the production of performative works, cultural mediation initiatives, and site-responsive interventions.

Since its inception, the collective has participated in the Periscopio series at La Térmica; presented A granel at the MVA in Málaga; carried out a number of actions in Totalán—the most recent during its second annual residency—and contributed its own proposals to the performance Displacement of the Congress of Deputies by Roger Bernat in Madrid.

At the core of La Burra Negra lies a commitment to collective creation and the exchange of knowledge. United in their effort to experiment with and disseminate performance art, the group explores the invisible dimensions of artistic labor—its temporalities, efforts, and relational dynamics, which so often remain unseen—as a form of critical affirmation.

Their practice emerges from dialogue and shared reflection, in the pursuit of decentralized spaces where art can be experienced and its processes made visible. Each residency and each action becomes an attempt to inhabit creation collectively, challenging conditions of precarity while fostering networks of care and collaboration that sustain both their own practice and that of those around them.