Lotophagie / Lotus-eaters: Aljoscha

1 July - 3 September 2016

I treat each of my works as a living being

 

Aljoscha, artist

The exhibition "Lotophagie" is a personal project of the German artist of Ukrainian origin Aljoscha, who develops the author's direction in art called "bioism" or "biofuturism".

 

All his works are based on the creation of art that expresses the visual possibilities of synthetic biology and, since recently, bioethical abolitionism. In the future, the author believes that artists like biologists will work with live substances and create new forms of life.

 

Transparent acrylic substances, suspended in the static weightlessness of a white cube, can be considered the prototypes of new life forms that so far live only in the laboratory sterility of the gallery space, with the exception of rare shoots to the outside world.

 

The name of the project comes from ancient Greek "lotus-eaters" - eating the lotus; in Greek mythology the people inhabiting Libya / Tunisia, where the sweet fruit called lotus grew. It was believed that people who tasted it acquired happiness and forgot the past. Aljoscha does not try to describe the concept of happiness with a polymer metaphor. On the contrary, he captures the psychobiological state of happiness in a floating soft pink substance made of acrylic and light. Getting under the light projection, the viewer plunges deeper and deeper into meditative peace, experiencing art as a modern form of cognition.