MassMu to host Alex Vlasov exhibit
The Sun Also Rises, mixed media
The Massillon Museum will host a reception for the artist Alex Vlasov on Saturday, Feb. 26, from 5-7p.m. in connection with downtown Massillon’s Last Saturday event. The event will be free and open to everyone.
Alex Vlasov: I Promise to Make a Fabulous PTG Tomorrow,a selection of mixed media paintings, will be exhibited in the Massillon Museum’s Studio M through April 6.
Vlasov is a painter who is currently pursuing a bachelor of fine arts in painting along with a minor in art history from the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Using a vocabulary of artmaking that has existed since World War II, his work explores the strategies of original conceptual movement and examines painting’s ongoing balance between conceptual and material.
Vlasov is a recipient of the CIA Gund Family Scholarship and Mary Seymour Brooks Scholarship for Painting. He has shown his work in the 74th and 75th Student Independent Exhibition at Reinberger Gallery, Cleveland.
Alex Vlasov: I Promise to Make a Fabulous PTG Tomorrow,examines how a painting can dance between the conceptual and the material.The paintings emphasize their materiality through formal arrangement of color, shape, line, texture, value, form, and space.
“They are paintings. However, along with the formal aspects of the artwork, mental activity is a crucial part of the paintings," Vlasov said. "There is thinking within the work. A painting's materiality can be at odds with its concept. Thus, the form and the content of the paintings become interconnected in an ongoing dance where they both depend on each other.”
Referencing art history, studio practice and culture, the ideas behind the works included in the exhibition demonstrate how humor can question and change things that surround us in the moment, a moment, which also happens to be dominated by any number of existential threats, including an ongoing pandemic.
MassMu will post a podcast interview with Vlasov on Tuesday, March 1, at noon EST at massmu.org and facebook.com/massillonmuseum.
MassMu is located at 121 Lincoln Way East in downtown Massillon. For more information, call 330-833-4061 or visit massillonmuseum.org.