Egor
Fruit
Egor Fruit focuses on abstract paintings, graphic and fashion designing, and street art, turning the grey walls of the city of Zaporozhye-Ukraine into pieces of art.
Extravaganzza Magazine: Egor, your paintings have different elements which take us into a particular environment, sometimes also using a perfect balance between surrealism and post-minimalism. I understand you started with urban art. How did your background influence your work pieces?
Egor Fruit: When I was a kid I used to copy cartoons and comics. I think this is how it all started. I had a period of drawing my own comics. I worked in game designing as well. However, the deepest experience or, let’s say „the exact creative line“ started to grow with my connection with graffiti. It happened around 2002 with lettering, at the beginning, and later with the creation of some more complicated compositions with plots and characters. I focused on fonts. I researched a lot. I concentrate on reaching a style that would be different from anything I saw in the graffiti scene at that point. Then somehow I lost interest in graffiti as a subculture and started drawing anything I wanted, but I kept using the walls as a way to perform.
Art school and interior design education also influenced my work, of course. Nowadays I am completely into abstractionism -if you want to call it like that. Anyway beyond any denomination, painting really became the way to express what I feel, like music or vibrations, waves or ...magic if you want to see it that way. I really think that this specific background gave me the most valuable thing: freedom. Freedom of thoughts and freedom of techniques and tools of expression.
E.M.: Is it hard for street artists to express themselves in the country, considering the specifics of the Ukrainian context?
E.F.: Personally I felt no problems with the context even when I had some problems with the law a long time ago (nothing serious). Now street art is becoming even more „legal“ and now is understood as a cultural phenomenon. Therefore it’s fine. It´s actually awesome!
E.M.: Have you worked in other art forms besides painting?
E.F.: Not so long time ago I made an installation for my friend’s dj party "Tendannce", where I created this object I called “filter”. I also made some sculptures for my first exhibition “meditation. borders.” I’ve tried a lot of ways to perform. It does´nt really matter in which way the artist performs if there is a sense, a meaning.
E.M.: With Quintessence, your last exhibition at the gallery of "Intourist hotel" in Zaporizhzhya, you manage to transmit an atmosphere of tranquility and peace. What was your motivation and your goals for the exhibit?
E.F.: Thanks for feeling the atmosphere that way. The point is: I don’t really understand why am I doing something. I find the word expression conflictive. I´I’m not pursuing anything. It is a way to let the moment be. I just feel that something has to be done, and when I start my creations something guides me through and everything just happens in the best way it can happen at that moment. And I feel blessed and beloved for that opportunity. I feel love and just transmit it to the world. It is sharing. Sharing my awareness. It is also a way of waking up people. Reminding them the most important things in our life. Letting it be -even for just a moment. A chance for people to perceive themselves introspectively. To perceive that unlimited deepness of mind and to recognize themselves through that perception. All this is pure love for me.
E.M.: Where is your art inspiration coming from, I mean is there places, artists or specific activities from getting „lets say“ the energy to turn on your creative process?
E.F.: Life. Life is inspiring, it’s unlimited and endless. It has a limitless quality of facets. And process of living life is fulfilling for me as an inspiration. All I feel is inspiring. I love clear wild nature to give you an example. I travel as much as I can, camping, hitchhiking. Living wild is the best way to feel myself and the world. I love to dance; I love to visit concerts and parties. I like to see all spheres of social activities, music, architecture, other artists, science, spiritual teachers, movies. For me that what they call "spiritual" is not less important than „the tangible world“. Every single thing is a part of life. Therefore anything is inspiring if you really aloud you to see it. The main point is to be awaken and to perceive it. Awareness.
E.M.: Tell us about the meaning of your lecture "everyone can become an artist“ you gave a couple of months ago.
E.F.: There was a few versions of naming the lectures:
-You can do it like that too!
-Opening the creative potential
-The artist’s way (it’s also the name of book by Julia Roberts, which helped me in crisis period a few years ago)
So all this points had a place in my talk. I basically opened my experiences. People need to understand that everything is possible. I shared some tools how to work with mental inner mechanisms and use them to free that inner child, who is the main entity inside each of us that knows how to be free and to be an artist, a creator.
So I shared experience, inspiration and love with people through this lectures.
E.M.: Did you have any other collaborations or projects for the future that you would like to tell us about?
E.F.: That question makes me feel very excited! and yes, there are many new projects going on but I think it is better to talk about it when they are ready to be performed. All I can say is that they are related with fashion, with the creation of objects, with designing, with collaborations with other artists and an exchange with the community. I will definitely have a lot of fun and I hope all the people around will too.