ALJOSCHA

In his drawings, sculptures, and installations, Aljoscha (born 1974 as Aleksey Alekseevich Potupin in Glukhov, Ukraine) deals with topics including biology, life doctrines, and ‘bioism’—a utopian model of newly conceived life forms and ways of living as well as larger philosophical and academic issues surrounding life itself.

As he puts it: ‘I view art as one of the highest forms of human activity. For me, it represents a philosophy, maybe even a religion. In this sense, I am trying to create an aesthetic utopia.’

His delicate, futuristic acrylic objects and installations of colourfully pigmented acrylic glass have a sculptural as well as painterly character. Drawing and painting, both of which occur at the beginning of his process of art production, play an essential role in this. His experiments with painting and colour finally led him to work in three dimensions. The transparency and fragility of the materials as well as the ephemerality of the form is deliberately chosen for its hovering quality, evoking a sense of movement and dynamism. Inspired by organic forms of our microcosmos, the artist—and scientist—wants to create new contexts that are rooted in endlessness, ineffability, and the unknown. While the inner appearance that radiates ‘biofuturist grandeur and happiness’ interests him, so too does the outer one, in which a larger whole becomes a single organism through seemingly random juxtapositions of individual sculptures.

The small sculptures—organic, biological objects—partly recall the delicate quality of coral and other aesthetics that are only to be found in the natural world. Aljoscha creates new worlds with his entirely unique formal language. He thereby poses questions that affect the individual and his freedom while at once scrutinising societal processes from a bioethical standpoint.

The title of the exhibition peak experience is a logical progression from the theme of the 2017 installation Eine Biologie des Glücks (A Biology of Happiness), which was realised at the Kunstraum Dornbirn. The exhibition’s concept stems from biological studies of human elation as well as unique life experiences, in which euphoria and lyricism, eudaemonia and the joy of being (Daseinsfreude) as well as idealism play a central role. These concepts, which are tied to biofuturist visual experiences in an aesthetic sense, are unique features of this show.

ALJOSCHA was born in Gluhkov, Ukraine in 1974. He was a guest student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Professor Konrad Klapheck between 2001—2002, and he studied at the Internationalen Sommerakademie für Bildende Kunst in Salzburg under Shirin Neshat in 2006. The artist has lived and worked in Düsseldorf since 2003.

His work is represented in numerous private collections and museums, including the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg, the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, and the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.