Alexej Meschtschanow
“My mechanical mountings are not of a malicious nature, but rather conceived primarily as a means of ennoblement. Certainly, the objects must suffer from the additional burden imposed on them, but in the end, it is my iron appendages that will wrest them from the ravages of time.” Alexej Meschtschanow
About the artist
Alexej Meschtschanow examines the physical and aesthetic qualities of established social conventions through sculpture and installation. Studying our immediate social environments with an analytic and compassionate eye, he assembles found objects, derelict furniture and archival photographs. With his unique artistic perspective, Meschtschanow focuses on the imaginative potential and psychological depths involved in the construction of identities, compulsion toward self-realisation and the socially driven urge for optimisation.
His sculptural works interlock two communicative modes – the passive and the active. The end effect of his creative output culminates in figures of poetic melancholy, attempting to break out of the vicious cycles of Fordist, totalitarian or fetishist forms of functionalism.
Meschtschanow’s works play on the consequences of miserable socio-political transparency. The frameworks of welded tubular steel and clamps connect and fasten the individual components to one another to the extent of utter immobility. On the one hand this reflects obstinacy, immovability and conservatism, while serving as an image of autonomy, connectedness and solidarity on the other. Steel, commonly a most rigid and refractory material, is put into potentially proliferative biological forms.
“By circumscribing physical objects, Meschtschanow’s works guide the spectator through realms of uncertainty. On this quest for a terminology with which to name that which has not yet been grasped, we find ourselves moving through semantic interstices where facticity might well appear illusory.” Oliver Kossak, 2011
Publications
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Alexej Meschtschanow Die Geburt der Hygiene / The Birth of the Hygienic
ger./engl. Ed.: Alexej Meschtschanow The Greenbox, Berlin 2011 -
Alexej Meschtschanow Tiefbauarbeiten
Ed.: Necmi Sönmez Museum Folkwang, Essen 2004/2005 out of stock