Illya Pavlov


Illya Pavlov
  • Vid Pupa 2005

  • Bodyscapes 2020

Illya Pavlov (b. 1982) is a design artist and one of the founders of the Grafprom design studio. In 2019 he moved to Graz, Austria where he is teaching at FH JOANNEUM Institute of Design and Communication.

The name of Pavlov’s 2005 Vid Pupa project (At the Belly Level) is a parody of the way so many KSP photographs were taken — without looking into the viewfinder in order not to attract the subject’s attention. But, in fact, it is a series where he takes photos of the images in another camera’s waist-level viewfinder. The resulting image is one step further removed from the scene: yet another move in the conceptual art direction.

“Pavlov’s Vid Pupa project requires the viewer to address the ideation that the camera, the lens, the viewfinder, all remove us from the experience of the actual object.  Experience, in this case, is the result of various layers and modifications. Pavlov makes us address the subjectivity of the machine and the machine user. His work asks us to consider: "we" are looking at “looking at”. The real camera image after all is a circle”. (Roberto Muffoletto)

© Illya Pavlov. From Cross_country, 2017

Pavlov’s later Bodyscapes (2020) project is a series of light installations. The artist projects images on different parts of the body and photographs them. Such image complication is a follow-on to the overlays technique popular with the Vremya group. For Illya Pavlov, a son of KSP first generation artist Evgeniy Pavlov, it “runs in the family”.