Between the Lines

Andrey Olenev is an artist whose practice combines street art, painting, drawing, and installation. He creates complex visual narratives filled with philosophical musings on people, their internal world, and the reality that surrounds them. In his works he often references the traditions of Medieval and Northern Renaissance art, combining them with contemporary urbanist motifs and surrealist subjects. One of the key areas of Olenev’s work is the artist’s book, where only the text and illustrations are important but also the texture of the paper, the binding, and the use of non‑standard materials.

In Between the Lines the text loses its usual function. The letters are reduced to the size of a pixel, transforming into an abstract, rhythmic pattern reminiscent of Morse code, and the lead role is played by the illustrations. Unlike in Olenev’s previous works they are not on a single subject and instead are independent visual statements on the problems of the urban environment. Double‑sided printing on tracing paper allows the illegible text to be seen through the illustration, creating an additional semantic tension. The cover of the book is in the form of a modest box made of bookbinding card, and inside is a series of illustrations that balance somewhere between the absurd and metaphor. A wooden house is transformed into a rickety hut with a window frozen in the void; a bucket with water flowing from it disrupts the very idea of its purpose; a garbage bag tied with a red ribbon like a gift underlines the ironic contradiction between form and content. These images, which combine subtlety of making and a sharp social subtext, create a dissonance between aesthetic refinement and the theme of everyday disorder.