© Mustikka

Welcome on board to my latest discovery: Alexei Meschtschanow. Meschtschanow’s exhibition concept “The Buggenbauer Syndrome” in 2007, embraced a series of sculptures resembling pieces of furniture placed in open space. Cold, terrific, these are self-sufficient objects. The objects observed are indeed familiar, but they can no longer be associated or classified. They are rudiments of a social arrangement, in which parameters such as security, hygiene and sense of style had their undisputed places. Their image is emphasized and at the same time is humiliated.

© Alexei Meschtschanow

Meschtschanow leaves these seemingly self-contained objects to the torture of examinationthrough their “aesthetic impurity”, in the process of which the Buggenbauer Syndrome performs the part of an aesthetic formula or an image. The receptivity is both of a sensual as well as a mental nature. Lately Meschtschanowstarted to apply the same concept to old portraits. And that’s precisely the series I like more.

© Alexei Meschtschanow
© Alexei Meschtschanow

Alexei Meschtschanow, born in 1973 in Kiev, studied at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, Gerrnany. He lives and works in Berlin. Among his solo exhibitions are “Biedermeierstandards”, Rainer Wehr gallery, Stuttgart, Germany (2004), “Tiefbauarbeiten”, Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany (2004), and “Amorphe Form in Mausefalle”, AMERIKA, Berlin (2006). Further, he participated in numerous exhibitions such as “Steven Black and Alexej Meschtschanow”, Kunstverein Leipzig, Germany (2005), Kiemms Berlin, (2012).

By Ingrid Melano

Klemms Berlin