10 Questions with Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch
Ilya Fomin (b.1973, Novosibirsk) is a digital artist exploring reinterpreted and reconstructed forms of perception in the age of digital transformation. His work investigates the fluidity of memory, the intersection of human cognition and digital aesthetics, and the continuous process of visual deconstruction and reassembly. Rooted in digital media, his practice integrates layering, collage, and glitch aesthetics to reflect the shifting nature of contemporary reality.
Since 1998, he has participated in events featuring original performances. Currently, he creates static and dynamic digital works, realized in printed formats or projections. Lives and works in Moscow.
Solo exhibitions and festivals include Messages from Russia at Belroy's Bijou Space in Antwerp, Belgium (2020). Group exhibitions and festivals include Color vs Black & White at Ruarts Gallery, Moscow, Russia (2024); Vulnerable Video Art Festival at Pushkinskaya 10, St. Petersburg, Russia (2024); Ontdek at Roman de Vero Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (2024); and Kunst Terra at Kunstera Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland (2021).
Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch - Portrait
ARTIST STATEMENT
Ilya Laznes Binch creates digital abstract visual works that explore reconstructed forms of perception in the era of digital transformation. His artistic pseudonym reflects the importance of variability—how perception, though seemingly constant, shifts as individual elements change. His practice is rooted in the fluidity of memory, exploring how digital media shapes, erases, and reconstructs reality.
Laznes Binch’s approach is deeply tied to the dismantling of traditional hierarchies—of time, rules, and artistic tools. Growing up in a classical painter’s studio, he found digital media to be a new frontier, an unrestricted space to redefine visual language. He works with layering, collage, and deconstruction, turning fragments of the digital information stream into complex compositions that challenge the boundaries between order and chaos.
For him, memory is not a static archive but a shifting continuum—much like in The Mystery of the Third Planet, where past and future intertwine. His art captures perception in motion, offering no fixed meaning but instead inviting interaction and reinterpretation.
By integrating digital tools with an intuitive creative process, Laznes Binch creates works that embody the evolving nature of visual experience, encouraging the viewer to engage with memory, transformation, and the unseen narratives within abstraction.
209, digital art, 2021 © Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch
INTERVIEW
First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. Who are you, and when did you first approach art making?
My name is Ilya Fomin, and I’m an artist. My creative alias is Laznes Binch. I started engaging with art—including visual art—in my teenage years. It began with graphic work, photography, and drawing. At first, I worked under my real name,without thinking about pseudonyms. Art was always in the background—it was always with me, even when I was professionally involved in editing, computer graphics, or business.
I created my first digital piece back in the late ’90s—in Photoshop. That’s also when my first alias emerged: SPB — “Siberian Plasticine Business.” The name was a joke, but my approach to visuals was serious. Later, after moving to Moscow, I temporarily stepped away from art, but about 15 years later, I returned—this time consciously and consistently.Artistic and process-based reflection on the world has now become an integral part of my life.
130224, digital art, 2024 © Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch
What inspired you to follow this path? And how did you develop into the artist you are today?
Honestly, I always felt drawn to art. I just didn’t immediately understand what form would suit me naturally. Classical drawing, painting, architecture—they all seemed too focused on craft. I was always looking for something else: a freer approach, driven by internal impulses and emotional states rather than just form. The computer became my entry point. I realized it could handle the craft part—drawing a straight line, creating a gradient, shading a surface—while I focused on the real essence: meaning, emotions, structures of perception. My development has been a journey of mastering a new digital tool that helps create artistic imagery, working with memory, fragments, and intuition, from a technician to a poet within the image.
The first turning point was the realization that the computer isn’t just a tool, but an ideal assistant—it can take over the routine tasks, leaving me space to focus on the core: the image, the meaning, the feeling. I understood I could work with visuality faster, more freely, and more flexibly than with traditional techniques.
What initially led you to explore digital art, and how has your practice evolved over the years?
It all began with vector editors, then Photoshop, then 3DS Max, After Effects, Premiere, Maya 3D. I experimented a lot, and tried different approaches. In the ’90s—the final decade of the 20th century—working with digital tools was slow: computers were limited, laggy. But there was a charm in that too. The waiting, the unpredictability of results—it became an artistic experience in itself. Over the years—with the growth of computing power and experience—my practice became deeper, more meaningful, more predictable, multilayered, and conceptual. Now I process dozens of images within a single work, using my own techniques of overlaying, deformation, stitching layers. At the same time, I observed the work of classical artists, sculptors, architects—saw how many years it takes to train the hand and eye, to replicate the masters, and then to search for your own style. That path seemed unfairly long and distracting.
I saw how behind the refined aesthetics lay fatigue, endlessly dirty hands, immense labour, and often even physical pain from trying to correct a mistake on canvas or stone.
I was looking for my own medium. I wanted a way to create without getting my hands dirty. Not because I don’t respect craft, but because I was striving for pure visual thinking.
The computer became not just a tool, but a space of freedom—where I could work precisely, intuitively, and endlessly inventively.
311223 Fast one, digital art, 2023 © Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch
Nearly ready, digital art, 2023 © Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch
Your artistic pseudonym, a play on “business lunch,” suggests a reality in constant flux. How does this concept shape your creative process?
The pseudonym “Business Lunch” is both irony and a reflection on the times we live in. An era where everything must be fast, understandable, “packaged”—even art. That both irritates and inspires me. The name works as a metaphor: fast consumption, a set-menu of meaning, standardized emotions. In a sense, it’s a challenge to myself—how to stay slow in a world that demands speed. My creative process is the antithesis of haste. I collect images of chefs preparing not a discount lunch but a complex dish with seventeen ingredients. Each element is not just a visual fragment, but part of an internal architecture of memory.
I work with what might be called a “multi-exposure of consciousness”: any memory or imagined image is not an exact copy of an object but an overlay of dozens of previously seen forms, associations, and sensations. The mind doesn’t store a concrete object—it holds an imagined state, triggered by the desire to recreate it. That’s what I try to capture. So my work is like a vessel into which fragments are layered: frames of the past, emotional echoes of the present, and digital imprints of everyday life. I intentionally work with a slow gaze. It’s my way of resisting the culture of instant consumption—to create images you have to look into, return to—not just to examine, but to allow them to grow within your perception.
Memory plays a central role in your work, often appearing as a fluid, ever-changing entity. How do you approach memory as both a personal and collective phenomenon in your art?
I perceive memory as a visual process. Imagine a glass vessel into which translucent sheets are dropped—each new image alters the overall picture when held to the light. The mind works the same way: memories layer, shift, fade. My art is an attempt to capture a state, not a specific event. I collect images—my own photographs, fragments from the internet, random moments from life, textures—and layer them. This is a conversation with personal memory but also with the collective one because all these images have existed somewhere, stored in the visual reservoir we all share. I restore the vessel of elapsed time from broken shards of the past, applying a “golden patch.” It’s a metaphor borrowed from the Japanese practice of kintsugi—repairing a broken vessel with gold. My aim isn’t to hide the cracks, but to soften the aesthetic flaws left in the making of the original—tracing beauty in the imperfection.
110125 no№mestep111, digital art, 2025 © Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch
Your work often plays with perception. Do you want your audience to interpret your pieces in a specific way, or do you prefer open-ended engagement? And what do you hope viewers take away from your work, especially in terms of their own perception of memory and reality?
It doesn’t matter to me if the viewer “understands” my work the “right way.” I don’t give out keys. My goal is for the person to want to look closer, stay, and ask themselves a question.
And—possibly—find something in the image that resonates personally: a memory, a feeling, a colour, an association. I’d like my artwork to encourage attentiveness. They can be explored from different distances: from afar, up close, andthrough microdetails that they spark inner dialogue. Or even awaken a desire to take the image with them—not as an object, but as a reflection of themselves.
How do you balance spontaneity and structure in your creative process?
Everything starts with a spontaneous impulse—a state. I capture it as soon as it appears: in a note, a photo, a thought. Then comes the structural work. I create a moodboard, go through folders, set up the “field” I’ll be working in. Then comes image selection, editing, layering. All of this requires focus and craftsmanship. But I try to preserve the initial vitality. It’s like jazz: there’s structure, but inside it—total freedom.
You work with collage, layering, and deconstruction. What draws you to these techniques, and how do they help convey your ideas?
I’m drawn to the possibility of building something new from fragments. Collage isn’t just a technique—it’s a metaphor for memory, perception, and language. We’re all made of fragments: of experiences, images, cultural references. My works are just like that. I use dozens of images in one piece. Each one I edit, transform, sometimes distort beyond recognition. They lose their original meaning but retain an inner “energy”—as I remember it. I work not with frames, but with their shadows. That’s very close to how we actually remember.
010624, digital art, 2024 © Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch
Der grösser Rasen bey der Sonnenunderganck, digital art, 2025 © Ilya Fomin - Laznes Binch
Digital culture and the fragmentation of narratives are key themes in your work. How do you see the role of the artist evolving in this era of limitless media?
Today, the artist is not a producer of meaning, but an organizer of perception. We are all overloaded with visual information—and the true value is attention. The artist becomes a navigator: offering a point of view, a focus, a slice of reality. In the age of infinite feeds, stories, and media noise, I want to create images that are interesting to look at for a long time—where you can study the details, stay with them, and dissolve into them. It’s a form of resistance to the era of scrolling.
And lastly, what are you working on now? Do you have any new projects or series you are currently developing?
Right now, I’m working on a new series—a visual meditation on tension, both external and internal. I’m exploring fluid forms, reflections, textures: water, light, heat, decay. At the same time, I’m working on a visual diary project. I’m looking for a way to combine images with fragments of text—not as commentary, but as states. So that the viewer can read the image, not just see it. And in the future—I plan to work more with projections, spatial environments, physical surfaces. I’m looking for new ways to merge the digital with the real.
Artist’s Talk
Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.
