Exhibition
On time @ 4ever! – Alexander Iskin
Art is the only thing that survives in the end.
I am grateful for the opportunity to interrealize an exhibition in the Einbeck KWS Art Lounge.
That is not a given in today's circumstances. Quite the opposite. The cultural belt is being tightened. Art largely takes place only in the digital space. Although digitality with its many dimensions shapes interreality, I would like to point out how much I miss the times in full concert halls, theaters, operas, galleries and museums. All the excitement, the enthusiasm for the talent of culture creators. I miss entering wondrous worlds together with hundreds of people and sharing about it in community spaces after performances. AHHH!
At the same time, we are experiencing new art hypes in the digital space. So far, this makes me worry. On the one hand, interreality is gaining more and more space. On the other hand, I see artists turning away from art and complaining about lack of inspiration. This saddens me because art is the only thing that survives in the end. It is the most important thing because it is not subject to any system.
I feel privileged to exhibit at the KWS Art Lounge in Einbeck. An exhibition that was planned for November 2020. As the exhibition title says, it takes place "On time @ 4ever!" in April.
I am very pleased to show a variety of works that have been created over the past few years and invite you to take a walk into my world of thought. Be it the dizzying Iconic Turn Paintings or the first version of the sculptural installation Pixel Paintings. Be it the nostalgic spirit of a futuristic cockatoo in the painting Coca, too. Or our much-loved, coffee-addicted and art-critical Professor Coffee Machine - a collaborative work with Birds on Mars. You may fly straight into the universe, free of charge, with the painting From Fantasy to Fantasy, even without Elon Musk's rockets. The place or non-place we have been so mysteriously exposed to since the beginning of existence. In my galaxy with the title Galexi 1 there are chess-playing piggies and in yours?
Ready, Set, Go. I fasten my seat belt. See you soon.
Personal Statement: Alexander Iskin
Artist talk
The exhibition in video: Learn exciting facts about the artist, his work and this exhibition from Dr. Felix Büchting, KWS Board Member, and Dr. Bettina Ruhrberg, Director of the Mönchehaus Museum!
Interrealism!
Alexander Iskin received the Kaiserringstipendium 2020. In 2017, during a performance, he demonstratively proclaimed the "Interrealist Age", the correlation between virtual and physical reality. In "On time @ 4ever!" at NEWCOMER's premises, he presents his latest "interrealist formations" alongside a colorful selection of his painterly work.
Since 2016, Iskin's artistic activity has revolved around the question of the relationship between virtual and physical reality that determines our current lives. For the hybrid forms of our everyday life, the artist has found the concept of inter-reality and at the same time, in the tradition of the classical avant-gardes, introduced it into art as -ism. - Dr. Bettina Ruhrberg
As much as he is preoccupied with questions of the future and receives numerous ideas for his work from his discussions with futurologists, philosophers and AI researchers, he is still very much attached to the traditional medium of painting. Apart from occasional excursions into other media, it is and remains his "mother tongue", as he himself emphasizes. - Dr. Bettina Ruhrberg
On a square ground, areas of color and scraped brushstrokes circulate around a center or push out of it, as if set in motion by a centrifuge. Blue collides with yellow and orange, everything flies apart, swirls, creates a maelstrom in which the eye seeks a foothold, an up or down, a point of reference at which it can come to a halt - in vain. - Leonie Pfennig
There is no up and no down
The paintings, equipped with a rotating mechanism, invite a change of perspective. The artist hands over the image to the viewer, who can actively determine from which perspective to see it.
Installation professor coffee machine (child)
Professor coffee machine (child), 2020
This "AIexander Iskin child or product” drives around to view the artworks and give initial artistic evaluations in the form of a receipt that can be pulled and "read" by the visitor. In this way, the robot, which is loaded with algorithms, functions playfully as an art mediator. And if that's not enough, the little AI machine also produces and dispenses a hot coffee for the art viewer.
His preoccupation with burning questions of our time is reflected in the motifs of his formations, which are arranged between figuration and abstraction. There, deformed bodies or body parts tumble, float, or dance in front of or in hard-to-define, multilayered spaces in which they seem to lose themselves. In the course of his development, abstraction has taken up more and more space vis-à-vis figuration. Iskin, however, always uses painting classically in the sense of representation, i. e. his autonomous pictorial world sees itself as an analogy to reality. It does not behave critically toward the medium and analytically dissects, deconstructs, or interrogates painting, as was still common for many painters in the 1990s. His means are also classical: brush, oil paint, and canvas. Iskin is equally unafraid to refer openly to painterly traditions such as Expressionism or to outstanding individual figures such as Francis Bacon or Willem De Kooning. The artist's attitude here is definitely in line with the trend of a new form of painting that has freed itself from ideological and conceptual considerations. – Dr. Bettina Ruhrberg
About the artist
Alexander Iskin
Born in Moscow in 1990 and raised in Goslar, lives and works in Berlin. He was drawn to art even as a child. Goslar's Mönchehaus Museum became his second home. The encounter there with the Berlin artists Jonathan Meese and Herbert Volkmann at an exhibition opening in 2008 led to his decision to devote himself to art - to become an artist. In 2010 Herbert Volkmann became Iskin's mentor and supported his artistic development in a working partnership until 2014. Alexander Iskin works painterly, sculptural, performative, literary and cinematic on a multimedia narrative.
Alexander Iskin | Photo: © Julija Goyd
Performance
- 2021 Fenster Von Hinten (Window From Behind), Villa Grisebach, Berlin
- 2020 arturbating.com, Sexauer, Berlin
- 2019 Ensemble Mini & Alexander Iskin, Musikbrauerei, Berlin
- 2018 Internuts, Track 16, Los Angeles
- 2017 Apfelmus (Apple Sauce), Sexauer, Berlin
Solo Exhibitions
- 2020 Die Ursache liegt in der Zukunft (The Cause Lies in the Future), Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar [Kaiserringstipendium]
- 2019 ICONIC TURN PAINTINGS, Untitled MIAMI Art Fair, Sexauer Gallery, Miami/Florida
PLASTIC UTOPIA with One Fine Day Kids, Kunstverein Familie Montez, Frankfurt am Main
#bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthuuntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk, Sexauer, Berlin - 2018 Planet Topspin, Track16, Los Angeles, US
- 2017 the future is neanderthal, DSC Gallery, Prague, CZ
Apple Sauce in Paradise, Sexauer, Berlin - 2016 Reality Express, Sexauer, Berlin
- 2015 Wunschmaschine (Wishing Machine), Lachenmann Art, Konstanz
- 2014 Bastard Club, Sexauer, Berlin
About the art historians
Dr. Bettina Ruhrberg, art historian and museum director | Photo: Fotostudio Miriam Merkel
Dr. Bettina Ruhrberg
She (born 1958) studied art history, Romance studies and philosophy in Berlin, Paris and Bonn. Doctorate in 1990 on the Italian artist group "Arte Povera". After working at three art museums in Bonn, Wuppertal and Duisburg from 1990 to 2004, she was director of the Hans Mayer Gallery in Düsseldorf for two years before taking over as director of the Mönchehaus Museum in Goslar in 2006.
Leonie Pfennig
Art historian and author. After her studies and first professional years in Berlin, she was spokeswoman and social media manager at the Museum Ludwig and has been running her own office since 2015, where she writes and supervises texts and publications about art as an author and editor and advises institutions on their digital orientation. She is co-founder of the initiative And She Was Like: BÄM!, a network for women in art and design in the Rhineland.
Leonie Pfennig, art historian and author | Photo: © Nadine Schwickart
About the institutions
The Mönchehaus Museum, the Kaiserring and the Kaiserringstipendium
Since 1978, the Mönchehaus Museum has ensured that contemporary art has a firm place in Goslar. Every year, the city of Goslar honors an internationally renowned contemporary artist with the Kaiserring Art Prize. The non-endowed prize is now one of the most highly regarded art prizes in the world and is considered by connoisseurs to be the Nobel Prize of the visual arts. A high-quality exhibition program with another 3-4 contemporary art exhibitions, music evenings and jazz matinees, readings, events, etc. make the house a cultural meeting place in the city. The Kaiserringstipendium is awarded annually to young talents.
The AKB Foundation and the Kaiserringstipendium
Alexander Iskin has been awarded the Goslar Kaiserringstipendium for 2020, which has been awarded by the Verein zur Förderung Moderner Kunst (Association for the Promotion of Modern Art) since 1984 and sponsored by the AKB Foundation in Einbeck since 2014. The jury is composed of the board members, the director of the Mönchehaus Museum, Dr. Bettina Ruhrberg, the AKB Foundation, represented by Michael Büchting, and external expert jurors. The AKB Foundation is a young foundation with an old family background, which, in the spirit of the founder, is committed to art and culture primarily in the region of southern Lower Saxony.
Discover more
Your contact
