Zaur Mansurov was born in Tashkent in 1979. From 1994 to 1998, he studied in the department of design and book illustration at the Republican Art College. Since 1998, he has been a student in the department of monumental painting at the Kamaliddin Behzad National Institute of Art and Design.
Zaur Mansurov’s work has been shown at a number of exhibitions. They include “My Territory” (1997), “Young Talent” (1998), “New names” (1999), “Youth Exhibition” (2000), the exhibitions celebrating Independence Day, the Kamaliddin Behzad anniversary (2000) and the Navruz festival (2001), and the “Summer Show” (2001). Mansurov won a prize at the Behzad anniversary exhibition.
“Where are the sources of my creative work? The East is my starting point, the element equivalent to air. It is varied and inexhaustible for the creative individual. On the other hand, the East is unthinkable without the West.
The union of these opposing principles provides endless opportunities for the discovery of unusual, sometimes unique images. The philosophical contemplation and mysticism of the East, allied to the precise rationalism and free creative thinking of the West. The preservation of the traditions of the East and the constant revolutionary changes of the West. The soul of the East and the mind of the West (and vice versa). These oppositions underlie our contemporary art, so that Eastern postmodernism exerts an enormous influence over me.
“I see the moment of truth in the interaction between these two opposites. These constituents are infinite: man cannot exist without woman (and vice versa), nor can love without hatred, beauty without ugliness, day without night, the three dimensional without the flat. The series can be continued endlessly. We say: ‘Beauty will save the world’, thereby depicting ourselves as people who live in a realm of darkness, but do not lose hope.
The fairytale is another element that speaks with the strings of my heart. Ordinary human feelings always underlie the uncommon display of the imagination and the vivid images of fantastic characters. Consequently, the wall between the imagination and reality in my subconscious is very fragile, if it exists at all.”