NAME: alexei biryukoff
BIRTH PLACE: USSR
BIRTH DATE: 1.19.76
BIOGRAPHY
After my first complex project in 2004 called Naked Loneliness I got interested in conceptual art and performance very much. I am interested in combining paintings, sound and performance together - all done by myself, and reach several channels of perception at a time. In our information age especially, people tend to collect and passively store information in their heads rather than live it through, be it emotions or images or whatever format of info they get. I try to create a micro world, where the paintings are not just pictures hanging on the walls, but where everything that is seen and heard interacts with the show space and involves the viewers, making them part of a bigger picture. It is more like a theater with the viewers standing in the center of the stage surrounded by images, sounds and action, that are aimed at provoking thoughts and facing contradictions. The aim is to turn them from passive on-lookers into active participants.
Naked Loneliness show was accused of pornography and closed by the local government of Barnaul, Russia. The work that is included in this show is one of the works from that show.
While male nudes are my major subject, I intend to work on different themes. The second conceptual show I made in 2006 was about the terror attack in Beslan.
I do like to choose one theme and live with it for several months, reading and thinking about it, working on it day after day. It is very much like a journey – I am visiting a certain place that burns my mind, moves my thoughts and emotions, and makes me want to say something back. I keep doing that till I am exhausted, but every time this happens I realize that I cannot exhaust the theme I am working on, it is inevitably the other way round.
After all it is not so good to be too serious all the time - art is a game, with no restrictions or rules to play. Just play away and enjoy the freedom. Make your every step an act of art, make people see ordinary things from new angles, be serious, play, then mix it all up and see if anybody understands what you are doing...
