 | Alexander Semenovich KOSOLAPOV 1943 — Олександр Семенович КОСОЛАПОВ • Александр КОСОЛАПОВAlexander Semenovich Kosolapov was born in Moscow in 1943. He graduated from the Stroganov Institute of Applied Arts as a monumental sculptor in 1968. In the early 1970s he began to work in mixed media, producing pieces based on a fusion of logically incompatible elements. He believed that it was necessary to free objects from their traditional associations. Kosolapov satirized Soviet ideological mass production, utilizing subject matter of Soviet kitsch. In 1974 the artist received a solo exhibition in Moscow. After emigrating to the United States of America in 1975, Kosolapov juxtaposes American Pop Art and Social Realist banalities using representations of Lenin and Stalin as well as slogans and images of heroes of American “consumer idealism”. After settling in New York, the artist worked as the editor and director of the émigré artists’ journal A-Ya in 1975-1984. Exhibited at the Museum Bochum in 1979 at the exhibition 20 Years of Unofficial Art from the Soviet Union. Kosolapov lives and works in New York. |
