Roma Krikheli

Who was your first art teacher?

I recall how it all happened for me. When I was very young, I loved to draw very much. As many children, I’ve come across pencils, felt-tip pens, and scraps of paper. I had a small red table in my countryside home, and a tiny red chair. That was my workspace and I loved to draw there. My mother gave me a book about dinosaurs with huge illustrations. I still have that book. I was incredibly delighted to study those huge illustrated creatures, so I drew a lot of these dinosaurs. It was a thrilling experience. And no one really taught me. When a kid is very young, it is useless to teach them, they just draw and that's it. When I got older, my dad showed me some specific techniques like hatching and introduced me to different mediums. He taught me about charcoal, sanguine, watercolor, and gouache. Initially though, I liked to draw on my own.

Did you go to art school as a child and what do you 

remember about it?

Yes, first I attended a small art group in the Pushkin museum. 

[“From the age of three he studied at the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum. Their group - he was the smallest, was lead by a wonderful elderly lady, a doctor of art history. She selected the children herself - the parents were outside the door. She looked at the children’s drawings and asked questions. Roma showed her the dinosaur drawings. Anya (Roma’s 

mom) bought him a book about dinosaurs and he looked at it nearly every evening. One of his drawings had a huge dinosaur and a tiny man next to it. This lady asked him: who is this little man and what is it like for him to be next to such a terrible beast? Roma replied that the little man is him and he is not at all afraid, because the dinosaur is his friend. And of course 

he got accepted.”]* 

We studied with a wonderful art critic who took us around the museum where we were constantly drawing something. It was awesome! After that, I went to a children’s art school on Krasin Street. We had a good teacher, his last name was Cherdantsev. To be honest, I remember feeling that I was kind of fed up with drawing. I loved the teacher but I was tired of drawing by that time, especially towards the end of art school. It didn’t excite me anymore. I got bored of painting still life — pears, apples, water lilies... I don’t have any super positive memories associated with art school. I don't know what it gave me, 

to be honest. 

What type of art interests you the most?

This question allows for some useful introspection because analyzing my different experiences, I understand that I am always interested in the first stage, when I am introduced to 

something new. It can be really anything, getting to know a new art form, or immersing into a new craft or some kind of new information. This primary penetration stage is always very compelling because of its novelty effect. You see, I'm a very fast paced in my approaches. That's why I often need to switch my 

attention. I need some kind of new story, and I immediately begin to think what's next. Here is how it works in my case. When I find something new, I start studying it, and I study it to a level when I can see how it can benefit me and the development of my company. We operate on the principle of adding something new all the time. I’ll explain later how my 

company Superposition operates not to deviate from your question now. So I tried different things. Drawing did not interest me, I am more of an organizer. I drew as a child but now I only draw some sketches for work. I have no desire to draw or paint recreationally. I like photography but to be honest I do not consider photography an art. It is very applied and I look at photography not as an opportunity to create something beautiful but as an opportunity to capture a moment or a person. It’s a cool method of conveying information but there is no movement in it. It does not have potential for advancement. Here's a good old photo and that’s that. I like to shoot on film, it gives me great pleasure. And now we are working with modeling and creating non physical 

objects in my company. Perhaps, this can also be viewed as art. Although, you know, I don't really like this wording because it's very pretentious. As soon as you say that you are doing some kind of art, immediately there is too much judgement. And it’s understandable. I’ll talk about this a bit later, not to overload the question. Basically, I like new things in terms of art. I like to master them and to integrate them into business. I personally like to film, and I have been doing it for a long time, continuously. I really like to experiment with fashion lately, and I’ll tell you about this a little later too. There is a lot of creativity in this, and this is also starting to be converted into a business.

How do you balance emotions and reason in creating your 

works of art? Can you talk about the process?

Also a great question. I understood that it’s crucial for me to love what I do. The creative process must be enjoyable, otherwise it’s not interesting. For example, I love photography so I photograph. I like non physical objects, meta universe, I like to explore how ordinary objects transform in virtual space, what can happen to the interiors or fashion, and how people react to it. I care about this topic. It is naturally very popular, trendy and cool. Then again, I don’t do this because it’s profitable, no. I do it because I really enjoy it. For me, this is a clear principle, and here I don’t question the balance between emotions and reason because if like the work, I do it. If I don’t like it, I don’t do it. It’s that simple. We are all humans, not machines. We need to be passionate about work and that should drive us. And like I said, I like to immerse in new interesting topics, study them, and understand how I can use this information for work. After that I delegate the tasks to my incredibly talented team mates who continue working on it so it brings a profit. Initially though the interest sparks because the task is pleasurable. Of course, this does not change the routine. In every process there is so much routine, there are difficulties, etc. but overcoming them is also a pleasure. It’s all a part of this beautiful process. 

Can you talk about one artwork you made in your youth 

that was especially challenging?

Strange as it may seem, I want to tell you about my diploma at the Moscow Architectural Institute. It was in fact the first serious moment when I realized that it doesn’t matter what 

you do, if you want it to do something amazing, something serious, and of high quality, only your hardest effort and dedication would help you achieve it. You have to work on it, redo it, spend even more time on it. Those things are absolutely necessary in order to make something cool. I was in my sixth year when I understood this. Before that, my work was relatively simple — a quick project here and there. I always had the opportunity and ability to do something that looked alright very quickly but you see, that wasn’t serious. A truly excellent project is always a result of extremely hard work. I realized this when I was working on my diploma which I am truly proud of. 

How would your work be different if you started studying art 

at a later point in life?

What I like about my creative journey is that firstly, it has been progressive, as opposed to abrupt, for which I am grateful for. I also like that it moved gradually, with an accumulation of experience. Most importantly, what I do is gradually becoming more and more avant-garde. I mean, I'm getting older and the projects are getting progressively more radical, newer, and so on. I gain more knowledge and experience with each project, and I am very grateful to fate for this because it is always incredibly difficult to cope with some crazy leaps that fate can throw at you when you are conditionally very young and are faced with some crazy fame. For example when you release 

something that is incredibly popular and you instantly become hostage to this success. It’s very difficult to cope with that. I had such moments, of course, but generally, the process 

has been rising smoothly and gradually. It’s been an upward dynamic. I am a designer. Design and art are different things, in fact, and they are quite different. Design is very functional. All my life I have been solving design puzzles and I really 

like it. I don’t take my childhood drawings too seriously and it’s hard to say how that affected me. As I already told you, as a young kid I loved to draw. After that, art school slightly discouraged this desire in me. I did it reluctantly and now I don’t often return to this art medium. Drawing is not particularly interesting to me. I don’t see a way for me to grow in it. So everything useful and important that happened to me can be described as a gradual accumulation of experience, removal of stereotypes due to personal growth, and creative work. So I am not sure. I do little bit of art but I do a lot of design, and I take it very seriously. There is a lot of trial and 

error and gradually it turns into something good. 

Can you talk about something that inspired you in childhood?

Two things. First, I think that inspiration is cheap, by and large. How does inspiration work? You go somewhere, you look on Pinterest for example, you visit a museum, listen to music, and something visual or musical inspires you. Some thought comes to your mind, and you get into a certain state of mind which begins to move you towards something. Inspiration is this easy carefree beautiful process. But by and large, it may be the beginning of a large complex work or it may not be. Why do I say that inspiration is cheap? I say that because inspiration alone won't lead you to a spectacular result. Only hard work and dedication will lead you to this result. Work, work, work. That's how good work and serious projects are born in art, in 

design and so on. That’s first. Secondly, here are my thoughts on the part about childhood. For as long as I can remember, the concept of uniqueness has been incredibly important to me. That is, analyzing my work I see that I always tried to 

do something new, and it is insanely difficult. As you know, everything has already been invented, and it is extremely hard to say something new in this world. I always had this drive to do things differently. That’s the key. When I see that everyone is doing something conventionally, for me it's just a red flag. For me it means that it should not be done that way. When I see that everyone is dressed a certain way, I understand that I need to dress differently. Anything that takes on a general character is an irritant to me. I always try to 

do things differently. 

I remember a moment from my childhood. I was very small, about three years old, and of course I always ran into street musicians who played at subway crossings my city. A classic story. I was little, I saw them, I heard the songs they sang. Some things I liked, some not so. And suddenly, at some point, I found out that they weren’t singing their own songs. They were singing songs of strangers. And I found out that there is such a performer as Tzoy, and everything else that was popular then, Russian rock and so on. I suddenly found out that all that these musicians sang were not their own songs. I remember being horrified after this discovery. The process of singing someone else’s song seemed incredibly shameful. I was ashamed for them. I thought, there is nothing unique to creating music, you don’t invent anything, you just rehash. As I became a little older, of course, I realized that it is a normal practice to sing other people's songs, and somehow this thought left my mind. This thought, of course, is not at all about whether or not it’s good to sing other people's songs. This is an example of where I got this craving for uniqueness. For some reason this has been a red thread throughout my whole life, and it’s still there. Today it’s exactly the same as it was back then. For me, only the attempts to create something new are valuable.

~ 

I understand after some retrospection why I think inspiration is cheap. If you are inspired by something, some kind of work of art, it means that you want to somehow borrow something from there, right? Of course, we all borrow, we all use some part of the visual culture around us. It’s impossible to ignore. I just think it’s nothing to be proud of. I also don’t think it deserves any attention. What deserves attention is that special place where, in this vast variety of visual stimulants, you can say something new. Something of your own. 

What artists influenced you in childhood?

As a child, I adored Bosch. We had a lot of art books at home. I studied all of Italian Renaissance but I liked Bosch the most. Why? Because he was the most extraordinary, you know, he was the craziest, he was the strangest. I liked strange things, things that were different. I naturally admired a lot of the works of the Renaissance artists: Michelangelo, Davinci, Raphael. Naturally, I loved them, but Bosch was my favorite because he was strange. I drew dinosaurs, they were unusual, you know. I liked everything super unusual. 

In addition, I will say that besides being inspired by a subject there is another process, a process of studying the subject. That’s very cool and it gives you a variety of different skills. Of course I studied art history and it was very enjoyable. At some point I was very fond of avant-garde. I understood the flow of art history, the gradual appearance of cubism, as the beginning of the rejection of realism, how it turned into futurism, accompanied by the industrial revolution as machines appear in paintings. It appeared very objective but a little bit narrower in terms of graphics, far from realism. Futurism naturally has a place here and all of these are very interesting topics for study. If you are saying something new with your art then you must break some rules and before you break them you have to actually know them. Otherwise, you just won’t spot that microscopic gap which can still be filled with something new. So knowing about art is different than getting inspired. Studying takes hard work and dedication. 

Do you keep in touch with any of your childhood friends 

from art school?

I remember being friends with Vasya Auzan. We went to Pushkin's school together and we crossed paths in art school. Last time we saw each other was probably six years ago. We reconnected, rejoiced, talked. He became journalist and did not engage in art. I didn’t talk to him after that. I have teammates in my current business whom I discuss the topics of art and innovation with. My current employees spend a lot of time discussing where our business is moving, about the goals and the visual language of our new projects. In this sense, we have an excellent job because in order to do it well, we need to communicate a lot, think a lot, digest a lot of information, and that is a wonderful side of design and its creation.

Did you have any career goals as a kid? Have you met 

those goals today?

I don't really remember who I wanted to be there when I was very young. When children are little they usually want to be astronauts. I don't know who I wanted to be. Now I hear children want to be bloggers, stylists, and so on. That’s completely natural. In the context of the time, kids want to those heroes that are relevant in the present moment. I don't really remember exactly what I wanted to be as a kid. I didn't have an ambition to be someone professional when I grew up. I just wanted to grow up because I experienced, as many kids 

do at young age, a certain level of discomfort from no being allowed to do certain things. I am talking about silly childhood restrictions like not being able stay up late or having to eat a certain food. So like any child, to avoid those restrictions I wanted to grow up. In terms of choosing a profession in early age, that was not my case. Six years before my diploma, at sixteen, I was not too motivated. I wasn’t interested in much. I wanted to go into real estate and have an eternal source of income while doing nothing. This is my perception of reality and myself at sixteen. Only six years after that, I realized that this is all super boring. Thank God that I had no other source of income as a child because it’s unlikely that it would have lead to anything good. Today I clearly understand that the joy is precisely in the fact that you work, do interesting things, grow as a result of doing them, make progress, experience difficulties, and overcome them. It’s super interesting to come up with new challenges for yourself and solve them, getting paid as a result. As to money, one just needs enough to be comfortable, be able to help your loved ones, and live comfortably. That is quite enough. 

Whom would you thank for becoming a professional 

you are today? 

It’s extremely important to understand this simple concept, and I realized this quite late, long after college: you can not be taught, you can only learn. Here is what I mean: You cannot transfer knowledge to someone if this knowledge is not accepted at the other end. As a teacher, you cannot 

forcefully teach someone. This does not work. And the other way around, a person who does want to learn will 

find a source of information, whether it’s another person, a book, google search, a course and so on. He will 

find a way to obtain the knowledge. I realized this late. At the Moscow Architectural Institute where I studied, not everyone necessarily wanted to learn or sit at a lecture. Some wanted to hang out instead. It’s a standard story. And so I understood the value of knowledge much later. Today I am eager absorb new knowledge. If something interests me, I spend time studying it. I am interested in fashion, for instance, and I want to 

commercialize my ideas. I had a chance to work for my father’s architectural bureau which has been a great business but I wanted to do something on my own. All my professional achievements are simply a consequence of the fact that I worked. When I did not succeed I tried again until I did. So I am thankful to myself. Today I am incredibly happy comfortable. It’s probably time to talk about how my company works. The name of my company is Superposition. It is a company, an ideology, and a methodology. As a company we are in business of developing creative projects for real estate. This includes real estate branding, selling concepts, identities, promotions, marketing, interiors, marketing offices, design structures that include lobbies and foyers. A year ago I launched a full-fledged architectural project. It’s such an irony of fate that I graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture, then took up graphic design, and only twenty-one years later returned to architecture. And today I do it with great pleasure and perceive it differently, from a standpoint of someone with extensive 

life experience. And with this experience my craving for this knowledge of architecture is different. It’s much more serious, thoughtful, and so on. And it's all very pertinent to real estate business because of it’s versatility. I can pick up an idea that interests me, study it, develop it into something that can bring profit, and delegate it to my team members who keep it on track. This is how Superposition works. At some point we only did branding, then we added interiors, other modules, and so on. There are many such modules, including architecture. By large, it’s quite exhilarating. And we love this job because it’s so much fun for all of us. We call Superposition a cure for 

boredom. In addition, Superposition is a methodology. The key of this methodology that each of my employees has a status of God. What does this mean? It means that we are not a client-oriented company. We are a team-oriented company. It’s very important for me that the people who have been working with me for a very long time, and whom I trust, receive the same pleasure from work as I do. I want them to truly enjoy it. It’s my coworkers, not the clients, who are the center of our universe. 

Everyone benefits from this. I benefit because my team enjoys working, and therefore they are more efficient. The client benefits from the job well done. It’s a win win. Superposition means all positions at once. You can be an architect, a interior designer, a graphic designer, a photographer. I enjoy it. I get bored of being just a graphic designer, just an interior designer, or just a stylist, you know. I’m currently playing with fashion and that is a bit of a different story. It’s a different field but perhaps it’s time for it to mature as well. Generally it’s incredibly enticing to have an opportunity to have multiple professions at once. 

What do you like the most about your job?

Most of what I like about my current job is diversity. I can absolutely legitimately work on architecture, interiors, be a stylist, a photographer, art director of campaigns, and so on. And all of those are business endeavors where I have support from a team of professionals. Being able to switch professions is what I like the most. I also like that I created a foundation for a system where this works absolutely organically. 

What advice do you have for children interested in art? 

Unfortunately I have to say that advice is absolutely useless, especially when you give unsolicited advice. It goes along the same lines that you can not transfer knowledge, you can only receive it. If there is a specific kid that has a specific question regarding art, that is wonderful. That question should be answered and it’s good to have people nearby who can help with good advice. I personally don’t throw random advice into space, for abstract kids who study art because it’s a 

thankless task. 

* from the words of Mikhail Krikheli, Roman’s father  

This interview has been translated from Russian.