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Alisa Gorelova
born 1988, Kazakhstan
An academically educated graphic artist, Alisa Gorelova exhibits a strong penchant for large-size form: her paintings refuse to settle for the confines of a canvas. There is definitely "mural" thinking behind her interpretation of the "universal artwork" concept, but she thinks in terms of space rather than flat surfaces. Her creations are three-dimensional murals, where every component part is created with the ability to levitate within the exposition, relating to the other parts at different heights and distances, embracing the entire room
and pulling the viewer in.
In the middle of the world the artist builds is the image of the body – undoubtedly human
in essence yet devoid of any vestige of identity: there is no face, no individual features,
no sex, and no isolation from other bodies. Oftentimes there isn't even a vertical orientation. The intricate plasticity of Gorelova's works melds strong, convulsive bodies into the inseparable oneness of a high-intensity metamorphosing spasm of love or hostility, wherein the roles of "partner" or "adversary" are indistinguishable from one another.
The viewer is pulled into an ecstatic rite filled with dramatic affectation and unbridled vitality.
The muscles of the arms, backs, shoulders, torsos, necks, thighs and ankles – body parts deprived of a consolidating center – enter into complicated relationships on a level
of intensity that brings to mind the raw Renaissance power of Michelangelo or the Mannerist excesses of Rosso Fiorentino. Gorelova's figures are bunched, patched together to form an "ornament of masses", materializing the ecstasy of collective sensuality
in an era when sweeping overpopulation forces humanity into the only remaining cohabitation option: being-togetherness.
It may well be that the hand with fingers is the most active agent in Gorelova's canvases. Interlacing, the hands palpate the malleable flesh, knead the "human clay". The latter, however, is not interpreted by the artist along the Baconesque lines of coarse and repugnant physicality, but as a spiritualized "corporeal foam", being splashed around
and spilled in streaks of paint.
Gorelova's iconography of bodies – ostentatiously esthetic and "created" – goes back
to the Old Masters' sketches and drawings on the margins of manuscripts. But it is precisely this "rough copy" quality that is a pure form of "becoming" for the artist, allowing her
to engage the expressive means of abstract painting in an unlikely marriage between classic draftsmanship and expressionist dripping. The energy of the interaction of bodies
is concretized in color, revealing parallels with Yves Klein's performances, but supplanting his monochromes with a motley diversity of contrasting color combinations, such as arterial pink or venous red with softer shades of blue or green.
In her paintings, Gorelova strives to impart a perception of life as a material flow, juxtaposing physiology and mimesis. As the body in its pre-gender state appears as a pure conductor of sensuality beyond the culturally imposed dichotomies of masculine/feminine or strength/weakness, so in her works there is no artistic division between "figure"
and "background" or compositional plans. This is, first and foremost, the kind of painting that strives to liberate its own subject matter as much as possible from agency, perceived as an external will, a superimposed order, and thus, necessarily, a violator of the natural, elemental will of the world.
Konstantin Zatsepin
Alisa Gorelova was born in 1988. She currently lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia. A graduate of the graphic arts department of the Repin Academy of Arts, Gorelova completed internships at the Nongyuan International Art Village in Chengdu, China and Saimaa University of Applied Sciences, Finland.
She is a member of Untamed Open Studios, regular participant in the Blazar Art Fair, and contributor to numerous multi-artist exhibitions in Russia, France, Italy, China, UK, and Finland. Alisa Gorelova has had seven solo exhibitions.
With painting as her medium of choice and corporeality her main motif, Alisa Gorelova has contrived to fuse superb academic craftsmanship, as manifested in the architecture of her multifigured compositions, with sophisticated modernistic decorativeness.
Solo exhibitions:
2021 — Velvet, as part of the Art Weekend-Curatorial Forum, Cklad 17, St. Petersburg, Russia
2021 – Gestura - InArt Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2021 – Ex-voto - Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, St. Petersburg, Russia
2021 – Closeness - Sevkabel Port, St. Petersburg, Russia
2019 – Lack of balance - Openstudio "Nepokorennie 17", St. Petersburg, Russia
2018 – Reality - Treeland Gallery, Florence, Italy
Group exhibitions:
2024 — 3 х 5 —PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 — Corpus Mundi — PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 — Bodily Man - K-35 Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 — Monsters under the bed - Third place, St. Petersburg, Russia
2022 — Fragments of Proximity - MCI Glavnyi Prospekt, Ekaterenburg
2021 — Corpus callosum / Corpus callosum (as part of Art Weekend) SevkabelPort, St. Petersburg, Russia
2021 — Final exhibition of the 6th season, Open Studios space, Center for Contemporary Art Winzavod, Moscow, Russia
2021 – "1,2,3,4,5" - Gorohovay 36, St.Petersburg, Russia
2020 – Feast in Time of Plague - Third Place, St. Petersburg, Russia
2020 – Simple things - DK Gromov, St. Petersburg, Russia
2019 – Dreams: public and private -Kuleshov-Bezborodko' mansion, St. Petersburg, Russia
2019 – Diversity within the whole - Сube.Moscow, Moscow, Russia
2018 – She - Treeland Gallery, Florence, Italy
2018 – Le Grand nu - Untitled Factory, Paris, France
2018 – Overcoming - CEH "New Manege", Moscow, Russia
2017 – Stream 2017 - Osaka Daimaru Event Hall, Osaka, Japan
2017 ZOOM 100: invasion - State Historical Museum of the South Urals, Chelyabinsk, Russia
2017 Petra scandali - OkNo Gallery, Chelyabinsk, Russia
2017 – She, Art Center 1+1 - Beijing, China
2016 – Image and imagination - Nongyuan International Art Village, Chengdu, China
2016 – "CORPUS. Anatomical theate" - Saint Petersburg Biennale of museum's design, Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2016 – Approaches - Taidebunkkeri, Imatra, Finland
2015 – The Sense of the Body. First International Festival of Schools of Art and Design, Albertina Academy, Turin, Italy
2014 – Tears of Happiness - Rossotrudnichestvo, London, Great Britain
2014 – Young Russian Artists - atelier Laranja, Eisenach, Germany
Residences
2021 - DAKC,within the framework of the Ural Industrial Biennale(Chelyabinsk)
2018-2021 – resident of the studio "Unbowed 17" (Saint Petersburg)
2017 – art-residency at the "Yabuli Oil Painting Base" (Harbin, China)
2016 - Internship at the Nongyuan International Art Village (Chengdu, China)
Grants
2017 – Saint Petersburg government's award "For achievements in fine arts"
and pulling the viewer in.
In the middle of the world the artist builds is the image of the body – undoubtedly human
in essence yet devoid of any vestige of identity: there is no face, no individual features,
no sex, and no isolation from other bodies. Oftentimes there isn't even a vertical orientation. The intricate plasticity of Gorelova's works melds strong, convulsive bodies into the inseparable oneness of a high-intensity metamorphosing spasm of love or hostility, wherein the roles of "partner" or "adversary" are indistinguishable from one another.
The viewer is pulled into an ecstatic rite filled with dramatic affectation and unbridled vitality.
The muscles of the arms, backs, shoulders, torsos, necks, thighs and ankles – body parts deprived of a consolidating center – enter into complicated relationships on a level
of intensity that brings to mind the raw Renaissance power of Michelangelo or the Mannerist excesses of Rosso Fiorentino. Gorelova's figures are bunched, patched together to form an "ornament of masses", materializing the ecstasy of collective sensuality
in an era when sweeping overpopulation forces humanity into the only remaining cohabitation option: being-togetherness.
It may well be that the hand with fingers is the most active agent in Gorelova's canvases. Interlacing, the hands palpate the malleable flesh, knead the "human clay". The latter, however, is not interpreted by the artist along the Baconesque lines of coarse and repugnant physicality, but as a spiritualized "corporeal foam", being splashed around
and spilled in streaks of paint.
Gorelova's iconography of bodies – ostentatiously esthetic and "created" – goes back
to the Old Masters' sketches and drawings on the margins of manuscripts. But it is precisely this "rough copy" quality that is a pure form of "becoming" for the artist, allowing her
to engage the expressive means of abstract painting in an unlikely marriage between classic draftsmanship and expressionist dripping. The energy of the interaction of bodies
is concretized in color, revealing parallels with Yves Klein's performances, but supplanting his monochromes with a motley diversity of contrasting color combinations, such as arterial pink or venous red with softer shades of blue or green.
In her paintings, Gorelova strives to impart a perception of life as a material flow, juxtaposing physiology and mimesis. As the body in its pre-gender state appears as a pure conductor of sensuality beyond the culturally imposed dichotomies of masculine/feminine or strength/weakness, so in her works there is no artistic division between "figure"
and "background" or compositional plans. This is, first and foremost, the kind of painting that strives to liberate its own subject matter as much as possible from agency, perceived as an external will, a superimposed order, and thus, necessarily, a violator of the natural, elemental will of the world.
Konstantin Zatsepin
Alisa Gorelova was born in 1988. She currently lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia. A graduate of the graphic arts department of the Repin Academy of Arts, Gorelova completed internships at the Nongyuan International Art Village in Chengdu, China and Saimaa University of Applied Sciences, Finland.
She is a member of Untamed Open Studios, regular participant in the Blazar Art Fair, and contributor to numerous multi-artist exhibitions in Russia, France, Italy, China, UK, and Finland. Alisa Gorelova has had seven solo exhibitions.
With painting as her medium of choice and corporeality her main motif, Alisa Gorelova has contrived to fuse superb academic craftsmanship, as manifested in the architecture of her multifigured compositions, with sophisticated modernistic decorativeness.
Solo exhibitions:
2021 — Velvet, as part of the Art Weekend-Curatorial Forum, Cklad 17, St. Petersburg, Russia
2021 – Gestura - InArt Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2021 – Ex-voto - Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, St. Petersburg, Russia
2021 – Closeness - Sevkabel Port, St. Petersburg, Russia
2019 – Lack of balance - Openstudio "Nepokorennie 17", St. Petersburg, Russia
2018 – Reality - Treeland Gallery, Florence, Italy
Group exhibitions:
2024 — 3 х 5 —PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 — Corpus Mundi — PA Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 — Bodily Man - K-35 Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 — Monsters under the bed - Third place, St. Petersburg, Russia
2022 — Fragments of Proximity - MCI Glavnyi Prospekt, Ekaterenburg
2021 — Corpus callosum / Corpus callosum (as part of Art Weekend) SevkabelPort, St. Petersburg, Russia
2021 — Final exhibition of the 6th season, Open Studios space, Center for Contemporary Art Winzavod, Moscow, Russia
2021 – "1,2,3,4,5" - Gorohovay 36, St.Petersburg, Russia
2020 – Feast in Time of Plague - Third Place, St. Petersburg, Russia
2020 – Simple things - DK Gromov, St. Petersburg, Russia
2019 – Dreams: public and private -Kuleshov-Bezborodko' mansion, St. Petersburg, Russia
2019 – Diversity within the whole - Сube.Moscow, Moscow, Russia
2018 – She - Treeland Gallery, Florence, Italy
2018 – Le Grand nu - Untitled Factory, Paris, France
2018 – Overcoming - CEH "New Manege", Moscow, Russia
2017 – Stream 2017 - Osaka Daimaru Event Hall, Osaka, Japan
2017 ZOOM 100: invasion - State Historical Museum of the South Urals, Chelyabinsk, Russia
2017 Petra scandali - OkNo Gallery, Chelyabinsk, Russia
2017 – She, Art Center 1+1 - Beijing, China
2016 – Image and imagination - Nongyuan International Art Village, Chengdu, China
2016 – "CORPUS. Anatomical theate" - Saint Petersburg Biennale of museum's design, Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2016 – Approaches - Taidebunkkeri, Imatra, Finland
2015 – The Sense of the Body. First International Festival of Schools of Art and Design, Albertina Academy, Turin, Italy
2014 – Tears of Happiness - Rossotrudnichestvo, London, Great Britain
2014 – Young Russian Artists - atelier Laranja, Eisenach, Germany
Residences
2021 - DAKC,within the framework of the Ural Industrial Biennale(Chelyabinsk)
2018-2021 – resident of the studio "Unbowed 17" (Saint Petersburg)
2017 – art-residency at the "Yabuli Oil Painting Base" (Harbin, China)
2016 - Internship at the Nongyuan International Art Village (Chengdu, China)
Grants
2017 – Saint Petersburg government's award "For achievements in fine arts"