16.05. - 08.06.2024

Galerija "Māksla XO"

Elizabetes iela 14, Rīga, LV 1010

ALEXEI GORDIN

Death Mill

With support by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the Embassy of the Republic of Estonia in Riga, Latvia, Māksla XO Gallery is showcasing the multimedia solo exhibition “Death Mill” by Alexei Gordin, the new generation of Estonian emerging artist. The exhibition “Death Mill” is Alexei Gordin’s biggest public show in Latvia.
The main subject of his artistic practice is absurdly stereotypical thinking and behaviour patterns of people in contemporary mass society. Gordin’s works are almost always narrative and cover exciting or annoying situations. The harsh reality of the art world has become one of his main topics, and the artist himself has become the protagonist. Scenes scattered with black humour deconstruct the image of the professional art world as something elitist and glamorous.
The exhibition’s title comes from a rare natural phenomenon called “Death Mill”. In this phenomenon, a group of ants separates from the main forager, loses the pheromone trail, and starts following each other, forming a constantly rotating circle. Thousands of ants go in rounds like this until they die, or the one returns to his senses and breaks the circle.
Through a given phenomenon, Alexei Gordin points towards a mass obsession with obscure concepts and the feature of history repeating itself; even though there is huge scientific progress, the most dreadful problems of humankind, like poverty, starvation, lack of resources, and war, are still here with us. However, the artist does not work directly with history and specific social problems. Still, he mostly passes everything through the prism of artistic existence, like a sponge filters dirty water through its body. During that time, the artist always reflected certain states of society of his epoch. Alexei Gordin tried to further dissect society by analysing the creative individual. In other words, the person of the artist becomes a main protagonist of his works, the indicative seamark towards broader processes in culture, society and politics.
New paintings created for this show are soaked with self-irony and are honest attempts to speak about serious things using the language of humour and absurdity. The artist believes that the whole history of humanity is nothing but an absurd carnival, and, thus, nothing should be taken seriously. Alexei Gordin’s work often presents the artist’s personality as an outsider and clown. However, often in culture, the person of the clown is the most tragic and wise. Most works show that the concept of a contemporary clown is inseparable from the meme culture that has defined our everyday life for the past 10 years. Catchy recreated images with a simple message have replaced long, complex textual concepts in literature and philosophy, showing a need for a simplified understanding of truth to answer the triumph of post-truth. The exhibition is one big fiction trying to deconstruct reality because what we see can become something completely different. Like ants trapped in the deathly circle, viewers are trapped in the illusive world of the artist’s fears and displeasures, connected to his everyday struggle in the art world and world in general.

Alexei Gordin was born in 1989 in Tomsk, Siberia, to a deported family. He studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Fine Arts (2008-2011, BA) and the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, Fine Arts (2014-2016, MFA). During the past 15 years, he has organized 22 solo shows, participated in 46 group shows, and exhibited in the Baltic States, South Korea, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Finland and France. His work has been recognized with the Young Painter Prize (2017). The artist’s works in public collections: Tartu Art Museum (Tartu, Estonia), PoCo Pop and Contemporary Art Museum (Tallinn, Estonia), KIASMA Contemporary Art Museum (Helsinki, Finland), National Gallery of Lithuania (Vilnius, Lithuania), Zuzāns Collection, ZUZEUM Art Centre (Riga, Latvia).
Alexei Gordin lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia.