TAKING FLIGHT: Birds & Bicycles Berlin
Posted on September 5, 2021
Alexei Kostroma
"The Pandemic" Series by Alexei Kostroma at MOMENTUM. 2021
"The works selected for this exhibition embody Alexei Kostroma’s concept of the Organic Way – the artist’s dedication to the study of interrelations between natural and social laws. Working throughout his practice with eggshells, white feathers, figures (numbers), and lemon yellow pigment, Kostroma identifies these four strands in his work as his ‘signs’ or ‘brands’. In his ongoing examinations of the unity of meanings in society and nature alike, and his use of four distinct media as metaphors for these meanings, Kostroma’s work exemplifies the very idea of the Birds & Bicycles initiative to create a factory of metaphors with which to reflect back on our societies.
Shown here are two works from two new series the artist began during the COVID-19 lockdown. Ongoing to this day, these series of works are a portrait of the artists’ experience of the world in pandemic. ELEVEN [Stability] (2020) and BLACK BILL 10,16 (2021) were both created while Alexei Kostroma was in isolation in his studio. BLACK BILL 10,16 forms one entry in Kostroma’s lengthy diary of consumption. Embedding into his works quotations from supermarket receipts for the food he consumes, the original bill is attached to the back of each painting; as much a proof of life as it is a reflection upon the monotony of long months of lockdown. ELEVEN [Stability] uses Kostroma’s idea of the eggshell as an image of the genome, of coding and storage of information, to present us with a single eggshell enumerated with the number 11, signifying stability. In these unstable times when we seem little closer to solving the ongoing global problems of poverty, disease, war, and climate catastrophe, we need all the talismans of stability we can get. An older work, NANO 163, also uses the egg as symbolic of the basis of life, arranging eggshells in a geometric structure, numbered with ink visible only under UV light, to reveal the invisible mathematical harmony of numbers. Yet in the disharmonious realities of our times, by embedding a secret code into his vision of the universe, Kostroma seems to be searching for a formula within nature to solve the many woes we inflict upon it."
From the text by Rachel Rits-Volloch, curator of the exhibition
TAKING FLIGHT: Birds & Bicycles Berlin, 03.09. - 31.10.2021
Featuring:
AES+F // Shaarbek Amankul // Inna Artemova // Marina Belikova //
Zuzanna Janin // Alexei Kostroma // Dominik Lejman // Almagul Menlibayeva //
Hajnal Nemeth // David Szauder // Mariana Vassileva // Vadim Zakharov
Curated by
Rachel Rits-Volloch & Emilio Rapanà
With David Elliott, Curatorial Advisor & Symposium Organizer
MOMENTUM
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin, Germany