ALEX BERDYSHEFF

 contact: berdysheff@hotmail.com

1964 Born in Tbilisi, Georgia

1988 Graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Fine Arts with a diploma in Graphic Design

1990 Studied at Glasgow School of Art under a post-graduate exchange program

STATEMENT

The most important thing for me is the creative process itself. It’s a game, a ritual, a lifestyle, it encompasses everything. The collection presented is the result of this process covering about one year. It is also the result of decades of creative search and intuition.

After experimenting with collage, printmaking, and even digital art, I’ve deliberately chosen certain methods and directions for my work. It allows me to find the most appropriate forms of enhanced expression. I guess it makes my life more interesting. I continue to innovate and push the barriers towards further knowledge and these experiments may take me to any existing ‘ism’. I have distinct preferences however. Most of my work can be identified as Surreal. After years of ‘doing art’, Surrealism became, in a way, the main navigation system with which to express my artistic ideals.

Several years ago I was lucky to visit Farley Farm House in East Sussex, well known home to the Surrealists. Now it is a museum and archive featuring the lives and work of its former residents; the photographer Lee Miller, and the surrealist artist Roland Penrose. If I had doubts about my artistic direction before that visit, they were dispelled and I became more certain about further developing the artistic direction of my painting style.

I get inspiration from everyday life, dreams, travels, books, etc. It can be any image or word. My imagination adds ‘missing’ details and creates a living environment for all the fragmented and contradictive material. When the emerging composition / construction develops and grows on the canvas, it directs my thoughts as to where to go next. It demands inspired corrections and subtle changes. Mistakes during this creative process are an essential part of those ‘interactions’ on the canvas. The plan if ever such a plan really existed can be completely revised as the painting progresses, so it becomes an entity in itself. This is the greatest joy in the expression of my art.

In my painting I combine figurative, often distorted objects, with pure abstract forms and textural components. They coexist beyond any physical or logical limits, revealing an invisible tension and eternal struggle between, or inside all forms of matter, giving rise to doubt in the reality of the visible.

Sometimes, I create so called ‘personages’ and place them in different settings. Just like a theatre stage. But I have no idea what happened there before, or will happen later.

The images I create may have their stories but it's not my part to tell them. Everyone can interpret these images. A personal experience and imagination makes such interpretation each time different and unique.