Alexander Belov

Born in Leningrad (USSR) in 1981 to a family of forestry engineers, he travelled with his parents across Siberia, the Urals and the northern regions of Russia. He first studied philosophy before moving into contemporary art. He works across painting, performance and new media. His main themes are nature, memory and post-internet society. He is a member of the art groups “The Party of the Dead” and “BLACKOUT Collective”. He was a curator at the School of New Art at the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Centre in St Petersburg. In 2022, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Alexander left Russia and now lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My canvases accumulate a sediment of memory from different places, different languages ​​and cultures. The work is done with slowly drying oils, varnishes and resins, as a counteraction to the hyperspeed with which information circulates today. Unruly materials escape control, flow away, mix, they are sensitive to the humidity in the studio, dust and light, the substance of paint and the forces of gravity themselves become co-authors and manifest their material existence. Each painting is a “non-linear landscape”, a place where cause and effect are confused. The collapse of linear narrative is not a fall into meaninglessness, but rather a transition to networked meaning. I think of my paintings as compost heaps where diverse matter is destroyed and recombined, where rot and decay are not a finished product, but soil in the process of becoming.