Alexander Belov
Artist working with painting, street art and performance, curator of exhibitions and events. Born in 1981 in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2022 emigrated to Austria, then to Portugal, lives and works in Lisbon.
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.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 Hive, Kz gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2018 Missing Alive, "Attic Space", Saint Petersburg, Russia
2015 Language Without Bones, re.FLEX Gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2014 CUTTINGS, Unconquered Gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2014 Untitled, Abandoned Building, Red Triangle, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2008 Happy Childhood, Navicula Artis Gallery. Saint Petersburg, Russia
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022 Escape River Map, Red Anti-Biennale, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2022 Not trash, but Sabbath, Cultural space "It's Here", Saint Petersburg, Russia
2021 Reproduction of fireflies, LYUDA Gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2021 Red River Map, Red Biennale, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2021 You will never identify me, Kz gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2020 Kingdom of Euphoria, Biennale Mir Bez Truda II, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2020 AUGENHINTERLAND, KULTDVORETS, Ekaterininskoe Sobranie, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2020 Untitled-4, «PESKI». Walk, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2020 Untitled, Antonov Gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2019 Invisible Work, Biennale on Kanonersky Island, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2019 Dracula's Mirror, Teenage Colonialism, Factory 34, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2018 Untitled, "About Labor", Egorka Communal Gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2018 Observer's Questionnaire, Pushkinskaya 10, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2017 Corruption Schemes, Calculation and tracing, Malmö, Sweden
2017 Working Time, Communal Workshop Pushkinskaya 10, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2017 YBBOB Yyellag, SAM FAIR, Street Art Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2016 Untitled, “Why exhibit like this”, Studio, Red Triangle, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2016 Private event, ETAGI Ligovsky Prospekt, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2015 Scheme”, NO TIME, Winzavod Contemporary Art Center. Moscow, Russia
2015 Untitled, OSTRALE 2015. Dresden, Germany
2015 Untitled, Phantom Exhibition, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2015 Dickicht, Kunsthalle Palazzo. Basel, Switzerland
2014 Twice Killed Bobby, LUDA Gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2014 Copy Copy, «IN TRANSLATION», Pro Arte, MANIFESTA 10, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2014 Theatre of Cruelty, Rizzordi Art Foundation, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2014 BOBBY Gallery, MANIFESTA 10 Parallel Program Venue, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2013 Golgi Complex, Formula Gallery, ETAGI Ligovsky Prospekt, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2013 Museum of Banality, Quarter Space, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2011 Untitled, Red Banner Neo-Barbarians, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2010 Untitled, PALACE Obvodny Canal, Saint Petersburg, Russia
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2021 Red Biennale, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2021 “SERIOUSLY AND SERIOUSLY” performative discussions, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2020 Final exhibition for NEW ART SCHOOL education program, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2014 Refugee Camp, parallel program MANIFESTA 10, Saint Petersburg, Russia
LECTURES / SYMPOSIA
2022 Lecture “Magic Broadcast after Science”, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2021 Lecture “Matter and Time without Man”, Marina Gisich Gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2019 Discussion “Self-Organization in Contemporary Art” Cultural Center DK GROMOV, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2018 Lecture Cycle “Ethnomethodology as an Artistic Method”. Art Center Pushkinskaya 10.
2015 Lecture Cycle on Contemporary Art, Participation in the Jury for Admission of Students. Paideia School of Contemporary Art, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2013 Lectures on the Aesthetics of Existence in the Philosophy of Ancient Greece. Neo-Antique Philosophical School, Saint Petersburg, Russia
AWARDS
2020 St. Petersburg, “The Artist Also Wants To Go To The Sea”, Antonov Gallery. Saint Petersburg, Russia.
2008 FOTOSEPTIEMBRE2008, San Antonio, Texas, USA
PUBLICATIONS
2021 “Learning to unlearn” MOSCOW ART MAGAZINE #118
2021 “Art education, self-organization experience”, SPECTATE.RU
2020 “Open Systems: Self-Organized Art Initiatives in Russia, 2000–2020”, Book, GARAGE Publishing House, Moscow.
2015 Archive of public speeches Lukas Ott, Urban Development Basel-Stadt, Switzerland
2014 Parallel Events. Manifesta 10, the European Biennial of Contemporary, Book, MANIFESTA 10 Publishing House.
2011 “A Look at St. Petersburg Art of the 2000s”, Book, Petropolis Publishing House, author art historian and art critic Stanislav Savitsky.
EDUCATION
2023 History of Performance Art in Eastern Europe, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
2021 “Digital Poetry Laboratory”, Moscow School of New Literature, Moscow, Russia
2014 “In Translation” course of lectures and practice, PRO ARTE Institute of Contemporary Art. Saint Petersburg, Russia
2009 Social Philosophy, St Petersburg University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2001 History of Philosophy, Dostoevsky College. Saint Petersburg, Russia