By: Meyer Wolfsheim

After eight harrowing months as a hostage of Hamas — shackled, blindfolded, and shuttled through Gaza in darkness — Russian-Israeli Andrei Kozlov is turning his trauma into something deeply human: art. As the New York Post originally reported, Kozlov is launching his debut solo art exhibition in Chelsea, using the canvas to process the pain he endured in captivity.

The Post exclusively reported that Kozlov’s upcoming show, titled So-Real Surreal, features a dozen oil paintings that confront the psychological and physical toll of his abduction during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. The exhibition, opening next month at the Lux Contemporary gallery, explores themes of suffering, survival, and resilience, drawing inspiration from Picasso’s blue period and Edvard Munch’s haunting The Scream.

Kozlov, who is not Jewish, fled Russia just over a year before the attack, aiming to avoid being drafted into the war in Ukraine. “What are the chances of being in a terror attack?” he recalled wondering, as he explained to the New York Post. On that fateful day, he was working security at the Nova music festival when he was abducted by a Hamas terrorist and transported to Gaza — a nightmarish journey now immortalized in his painting Highway to Hell.

“Highway to Hell shows the moment I mistook my captor for a rescuer,” Kozlov told the Post. “That was the beginning of the worst chapter of my life.”

The Post exclusively reported that Kozlov spent eight months in captivity, shuffled between different locations, often tied with ropes and kept in total darkness. That relentless movement inspired his abstract piece Maybe, which portrays a narrow, suffocating alleyway he was routinely dragged through — unsure if each step would be his last.

In a desperate bid to keep his mind from breaking, Kozlov would draw in secret when he found blank scraps of paper. “It was just for my soul, to get my mind out of that prison,” he explained to the Post.

One of the most emotionally raw pieces in the collection, The Gift, channels the pain he shared with other hostages and reflects the deep inner torment of that time. “It’s all the suffering I felt — and the suffering the hostages still feel,” he told the Post. The expressionist brushwork and raw emotion echo Munch’s influence.

As the Post originally reported, Kozlov was rescued in June 2024 during a dramatic Israeli special forces raid involving heavy gunfire and airstrikes. The elite operation also freed fellow hostages Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan, and Noa Argamani — the latter who has since been named one of Time’s 100 most influential people.

“It’s one of my three birthdays,” Kozlov said of the day he was rescued. “It’s the best day of my life.”

Now based in Midtown Manhattan, Kozlov told the Post that pursuing art in New York — a lifelong dream — is helping him find peace. Working out of studios in Greenpoint and Chelsea, he crafted his collection with a therapeutic purpose. “To create something like this, it speaks for me,” he said. “It’s another way to tell the story.”

One of the most symbolically charged works, Other Side of the Mirror, features a pink border that Kozlov described as representing his return to the “pink world” — a metaphor for life beyond captivity. “It’s an absolutely different world,” he said. “It’s like I’m seeing everything from the other side of the mirror.”