About my work

My paintings explore the tension between force and resistance, chaos and structure, seduction and repulsion. Through a physical and often aggressive engagement with oil paint, I construct unstable forms that suggest fragments of anatomy and life without fully resolving into recognizable organisms.

A painting is not merely a window into another world but a site of events and conflicts. Layers of paint collide, accumulate, rupture, and transform in a literal and metaphorical battle of forces, emotions, and energies, echoing the struggles within and between our minds and bodies. Remnants of these physical actions remain embedded in the paint, recording the events that shaped it.

I am drawn to the threshold where disorder approaches coherence, where the grotesque becomes seductive, and where beauty mingles with repulsion. Inert material appears to acquire a life of its own, struggling to emerge from the surface and pierce the viewer’s space.

Through these competing forces, I seek a sense of urgency, intensity, and awe—something suspended between a forming organism and an event still unfolding.

Bio

Boris Ostrerov earned a BFA in Painting from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and an MFA in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. Ostrerov has exhibited widely and has earned several opportunities including showing at Carthage College, AREA Gallery, Slow Gallery, and Paris London Hong Kong (PLHK). He has been featured in publications including New American Paintings #119 and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Ostrerov’s painting was included in the New American Paintings show at the Elmhurst Art Museum in 2016. In early 2023 he paused painting in order to learn woodworking and start a fabrication company—Art Surfaces and Fabrication LLC making custom painting supports, picture frames and more for artists and creatives. He has returned to painting in 2026 and currently lives in Chicago.

Resume