19. 04.2022- 21.05.2022
Aleksei Bordusov aka Aec Interesni Kazki
Aleksei Bordusov aka Aec Interesni Kazki Statement:
“This show is dedicated to my home country, Ukraine. Ukraine was brutally attacked by Russia on February 24th. The war is going on. No end in sight. And every day we learn of new atrocities and crimes that Putin’s troops are committing against my people.
The title of the exhibition “ Victoria” represents what I believe in and wish for Ukraine.
Victory of the creation over destruction, good over evil, truth over a lies. The Ukrainian people are defending themselves and fighting against pure evil.
Our beautiful, peaceful Ukrainian cities have been destroyed during these passing months. Thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed. All these acts are classified as war crimes and will never be forgiven. I urge the people of Europe and the whole world to stand with Ukraine. Together, we will win.
I painted the works that I show in this exhibition before the war started. There is no direct link to this war. It only exists in a picture that I painted here in Vienna.
We donate ten percent of all proceeds from this exhibition to humanitarian aid in Ukraine.”
Aleksei Bordusov. Ukrainian artist. Currently in exile in Spain. Studied in Kiev at the Academy of Fine Arts. Internationally known as “AEC – Interesni Kazki”.
With his paintings we travel to mysterious worlds. We encounter surrealistic figures and scenarios, people and animals with peculiar physiognomy, sometimes human and animal at the same time. Figures with proliferating musculature, extreme limbs, disappeared waists, men like trees, symbols of massive life, as if nothing could stop them. Overgrown with leaves that seem to protect like an armor.
Heavily stepping forward, powerful, making their way through a mad world. With walls that stand isolated, outside still smooth and seeming, but without connected houses. Bodiless heads float in the air. Trees have ears, mask-like faces peel out of walls. The scenery is brightly illuminated, painted in strong colors – with dark blue, rich green, dazzling yellow, screaming red.
With pure intellect, we cannot comprehend what we are getting into. Mere rationality is suspended.
Laws of natural science lose their generality. Habitual patterns of perception do not allow us to understand the complexity of the world. Symbols and their deeper meaning are to be explored. We have to find access to dreams, some erotic-stimulating and some fear-filled, to confusing fantasies,universal archetypes deeply rooted in us, archetypes of our existence, to unconscious drives, needs, longings and terrors. All the paintings we show in this exhibition were painted by Aleksei Bordusov before Vladimir Putin over an Ukraine with brutal war. His paintings are neither political statements nor commentaries on current horror and acute misery. But they do warn us not to rely confidently on the idea that we can understand or even foresee what is happening in the world with our firmly established patterns of perception and thinking. We believe we can recognize the reality, because we do not open up the sur-reality.
Suddenly events, which we never wanted to imagine, but which suddenly take place in reality, tear us out of cherished “certainties”, with which we have talked ourselves into feelings of security and comfort. We see the world tipped out of balance and fear that the horror in Ukraine could be followed by much worse. And yet, courage must not leave us. “Art,” says historian Kia Vahland, “cannot save the world or end a war. But it can help us pause in times like these, see through the situation, and draw hope.” Art, she argues, let us pause and trace things, with all our senses and with self-reflection.” In this way, we open up a “thinking space of prudence in the struggle with the demonic forces of life,” according to art historian Abbot Warburg. Aleksei Bordusov invites us to.
AEC has worked artistically almost everywhere in the world and created impressive murals. Wherever he paints, he curiously absorbs his surroundings, the people there, their culture, and is constantly inspired by them. He has experienced Mexico particularly intensively, the country with the strongest tradition and power of mural painting. And like the great Mexican artists – Orozco, Riviera, Siqueiros – he has mastered multiple genres and understands mural painting as a form of artistic expression, a genre that makes art and its messages easily accessible to a wide audience. AEC does not like the label “street artist” for himself. Rightly so. He sees himself as a painter who does not allow himself to be limited in themes, art forms and aesthetics, who is constantly evolving and always surprising. “I can describe what I do as a mixture of symbolism, mysticism and surrealism,” says AEC. His work has been compared to the works of Bosch, Goya, Dali, Riviera and Moebius. In Austria, Rudolf Hausner comes to mind. “Interesni Kazki” literally means “interesting fairy tales.” AEC tells them in all their diversity, approaching in his own way reality in its beauty and joy and in its menace and gloom. In an effort, as he says, “to trace the secrets of our existence and to understand mystical reasons of the universe”. He himself does not want to provide an interpretation for his pictures. He leaves it to the viewer to see in them and to recognize whatever he wants to recognize in them – with intensive contemplation. For this stimulates the examination of oneself and one’s own relationship to the world. Thus self knowledge, self-confidence and respect for individuality and otherness is nourished.