Born in 1973 in Kiev, studied at the Academy 01 Visual Arts, Leipzig, Gerrnany. He lives and works in Bern. Among his solo exhibitons are Biedermeierstandards, Rainer Wehr gallery, Stuttgart, Germany (2004), Tiefbauarbeiten, Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany (2004), and Amorphe Form in Mausefalle, AMERIKA, Berlin (2006). Further, he participated in numerous exhibitions such as or Steven Black and Alexej Meschtschanow, Kunstverein Leipzig, Germany (2005). With his solo show in our Zurich gallery we are introducing the artist to the Swiss public for the first time.
Alexei Meschtschanows’ exhibition concept „The Buggenbauer Syndrome“ embraces a series of sculptures resembling pieces of furniture placed in open space. These are self-sufficient objects, bound together by a strong mutual tie through the relinquishment of their practical functionality by means of threaded rods, supporting elements, glass, varnish or concrete so that their meaning cannot be defined by their material consistency. The objects observed are indeed familiar, but they can no longer be associated or classified. They are rudiments of a social arrangement, in which parameters such as security, hygiene and sense of style had their undisputed places. Their image is emphasized and at the same time is humiliated.
The term “syndrome” used by the artist disconcertingly implies a symptom of an ailment as if those objects were living beings or as if the observer had been forced to admit the psychic failings of his own sight. An inquiry as to the name of “Buggenbauer” would only lead back to the Zurich concept of space.
Such a play with the representation and the image of things correlates with the playful reference to the history of art. If Meschtschanows’ sculptures are a reminder of the Readymades, they are very different, since the artistic contribution is too present; and if they resemble a surrealistic combination of units dissimilar in nature, a coincidence must here be ruled out.
Meschtschanow leaves these seemingly self-contained objects to the torture of examination through their “aesthetic impurity”, in the process of which the Buggenbauer Syndrome performs the part of an aesthetic formula or an image. The receptivity is both of a sensual as well as a mental nature.
