Working at the intersection of digital decay, memory, and emotional distortion, DAMN TRUE constructs a visual language out of personal archives, neural glitches, and the raw residue of everyday life. Using AI tools not as shortcuts but as collaborators — even provocateurs — the artist builds still lifes and portraits that hover between disappearance and presence, irony and grief. Rooted in the fractured textures of contemporary Russian urbanity, DAMN TRUE’s work invites us to sit inside discomfort, to feel what image culture tries to erase, and to glimpse beauty through the broken.

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Was there a moment when you realised that art wasn’t just a hobby, but your true calling?

Yes, there was such a moment. But interestingly, it wasn’t loud or sudden — not a flash of insight, but more like a growing inner noise that became unbearably clear over time. As a teenager, I used to draw, experiment with visuals, and joke about reality through irony and collage. Back then, it was more of a way to hide from the city, from school, from the pressure to be “normal.” But everything changed when I started working with photography. I began collecting images — fragments of photos that I break down, rework through various programs and neural networks. And at some point, I realized: I’m not just creating “pictures.” I’m constructing a language — a way to speak with time, and with myself. That’s when I understood: this isn’t a hobby. It’s not even just a form of self-expression. This is my medium — my form, as an artist.

How does your art engage with current social, political, or environmental issues?

My art is a mirror that deliberately distorts in order to tell the truth. I work in the genre of portraits and digital still lifes of contemporary space. In them — fragments of the past, the debris of the present, the dying aesthetics of courtyards and everyday objects. It’s not a direct protest, but rather a documentation of decay — the kind we’ve grown too accustomed to ignoring. I consciously use digital tools to show how technology doesn’t just shape our vision of the future, but also alters our perception of the past. In that sense, my works are archives — not historical, but emotional. And if a viewer, even for a second, feels that they are inside that landscape or one of my portraits — then I’ve said what I needed to say.

Describe the process of creating a work — from idea to result.

Each of my works begins with an inner discomfort. It can be an image that won’t let go, or an emotional state that I want to capture — like a landscape of the soul. Often, it’s not an idea but fragments of my own life. I work with personal photographs, private archives, and neural networks. Some ideas come from real episodes I’ve seen or lived through: it might be the face of a stranger I once encountered, or in the case of still lifes — a discarded funeral wreath by a dumpster, a phrase on a concrete wall, a crooked shadow from some object. Then I begin collecting: like a digital archaeologist, I search for fragments in my iPhone camera roll, scan old photo albums, feed my sketches into MidJourney or Photoshop AI. The goal is not to “generate a beautiful image,” but to catch a glitch — the moment the neural network fails, and in that failure, truth emerges. I often intervene manually: painting over, cutting, erasing, distorting. I like this hybrid between machine and hand, between document and dream. For me, composition is not just the arrangement of objects, but the tension between them. Everything should be on the edge — as if one more second, and something will either collapse or come alive. The final stage is the test: can I look at this work as a frame from reality, even if awkward or distorted? If yes — it’s finished. If not — I keep breaking, destroying, and rebuilding. And almost always, at some point, the work starts to breathe on its own. That’s when it stops being mine and becomes someone else’s, an independent story.

Which of your works has been the most emotional for you? Why?

The most emotional one is a series dedicated to my mother. I didn’t create it as an artist — more as a son who didn’t get the chance to say the most important things. She passed away after a long illness, and I was left with photographs, voice messages, and belongings that suddenly turned into relics. I began reworking her image from fragments of old photos using neural networks and Photoshop — always on the edge of ethics, and on the edge of pain. I only started speaking openly about it recently. But when people look at those digital portraits and begin to sense why they look the way they do, their reactions are often deeply warm. Some have written to me, saying they’ve also lost someone and they feel these images as their own. This work mattered because, for the first time, I truly understood: art is not about aesthetics, but about the ability to share what can’t be put into words. It’s like leaving a trace when everything else disappears. And I think that with this series — these “ugly portraits” — I really began speaking to the world. As an artist.

How have social media changed the creation, perception, and value of art?

Social media are simultaneously a showcase, a mirror, and a ticking time bomb. They’ve changed everything — from the rhythm of creation to the final point of perception. At some stage, you stop thinking about “the work” and start thinking about “the post.” It’s both inspiring and deforming for the artist.
On one hand, social media gave independent artists a voice they could never have gained through institutions. I use Telegram and Instagram as platforms to share my work. That is my gallery space. I believe the real strength of an artist today lies in the ability to be alive in the digital. Not just to appear in the feed, but to create images that cling not only to the eye, but to memory. In that sense, social media aren’t the enemy — they’re a mirror showing who you are, once everything superficial is stripped away.

Is artificial intelligence a threat, a tool, or a co-author in art?

For me, artificial intelligence is something else entirely — not just a tool and not a threat, but a reflection. It’s like a cracked mirror: you can see the artist, the machine, and the glitch — and that glitch is what makes the image real. I call my practice P[ai]nting art, a play on words where “AI” is built into the very act of painting. I don’t just use MidJourney or Photoshop AI as assistants — I make the errors and irregularities part of the aesthetic. The most interesting moments arise when the neural network fails: it draws extra fingers, confuses architecture, erases a face. That’s not a bug — it’s a moment of revelation. That’s when you can catch something you would’ve never created on your own. AI allows me to work with themes that used to be hard to visualize: memory, distortion, digital fatigue, anxious imagery from the collective unconscious. Still, I don’t believe in “automatic art.” Without the human behind it, it’s just visual noise. But to ignore AI is to stay in the past — like refusing photography when the camera appeared. The key is not to let the machine dictate your style. You have to tame the algorithm, but never become its hostage.

Name five core themes or messages in your work.

✧ Memory and disappearance.

My art often captures what is vanishing — people, gestures, objects, moods. It’s a fight against digital oblivion. I try to make even the forgotten fragments of my photos speak, even if they’ll eventually fade away.

✧ Unfiltered Russian reality.

Nostalgia, memes, satire — all of this forms a kind of visual chronicle of an era for me, part of the cultural code.

✧ The human in the age of algorithms.

I’m fascinated by how technology shapes our emotions, our choices, our visual sensitivity. We live inside a feed, and I want to show how it changes us.

✧ Beauty in the broken.

I often look for aesthetics in dirt, trash, distortion. I sculpt a new language from the “ugly.” Because it’s in the cracks where truth and pain live.

✧ Phantoms and digital ghosts.

My work with neural networks generates images that never actually existed. It’s like encountering what could have been. They’re not alive — but not dead either. Maybe, just like us.

If you could become one of your own works — what would it be, and why?

I would become one of my portraits from the UN[TITLED] series — the one where my lived life, my experiences, victories, and failures are presented in a distorted form. Why these portraits? Because they contain all of me: the desire to preserve beauty, and the acknowledgment that everything around us is falling apart.

How do you see the evolution of your work in the future?

I don’t believe in linear evolution — like “I’m making digital works now, and one day I’ll move on to oil painting.” My development is more like an expansion outward, like a network, not a ladder. In the future, I don’t want to change the medium — I want to deepen the language. First, I’m moving toward installation formats where the viewer doesn’t just look at an image but enters a space: my portraits come alive, and my digital still lifes become physical, with the smell of decay, the sound of the street, falling petals — all working together to create immersion. Second, I want to go beyond the internet without leaving it. To create books, exhibitions, and archives that remain. Paper and tactile traces of digital experiences. I want the work to carry weight — not just in megabytes. Third — international dialogue. I want my visual language to be understood not only at home. The themes of “digital memory,” anxious urbanism, and fragmented identity are universal. I’m searching for ways to speak about them so that they feel both local and global at once. And finally — more and more, I see myself not just as an artist, but as a gatherer of time. I want to document the era and its errors. In the future, I see my work as a bridge, one that leads into an archive of loss, from which someone else might grow something new.

What does it mean to be an artist in the age of algorithms, where even the personal becomes public?

To be an artist today is to walk a thin line between sincerity and performance. Algorithms demand clarity, consistency, and content. But art demands silence, mistakes, inner storms. And from that tension, something new is born — hybrid, vulnerable, alive. We live in a reality where everything personal turns into content. Grief becomes a Reel. Memory becomes an NFT. Pain becomes “reach.” The artist is no longer just a creator — they broadcast, curate, and piece themselves together from fragments in order to stay visible. It’s exhausting. But I believe it’s within that burnout that truth begins to emerge.

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With a practice grounded in what they call P[ai]nting — an evolving hybrid of algorithm and intention — DAMN TRUE continues to push toward immersive formats and tactile traces of the digital psyche. As they expand their language beyond the feed and into installations, books, and archives, the work remains a gathering of fragments — poetic, dissonant, human. A record of what’s been lost. A whisper of what might still be remembered.