Alexander Basil

Galerie Judin presents its first solo exhibition of Alexander Basil, who was born in Russia in 1997 and subsequently raised in Germany. The 25 paintings in this group of works depict scenes and still lifes that are consistently set in an interior – that of the artist’s Berlin apartment. This interior world is dominated by a kind of clone or prototype – perhaps even an alter ego? It is a bald man with rosy skin, curvy limbs, and an ornate beard. The man is often unclothed, revealing delicate scars on his nipples that testify to a gender reassignment having taken place. We accompany this prototype during seemingly everyday activities: making phone calls, working on a laptop, lying in bed, drinking coffee, and ironing. The objects found in these tableaux are appropriately commonplace. But Basil’s narrational arrangements are by no means mundane or banal – they exaggerate the everyday into the surreal. Irons and sockets are set on fire, one of the prototypes melts, another sheds his skin.

In attempting to peer through this compositional complexity, we ourselves become the observed. For Basil’s images look back. The face of the prototype is found on many of the objects. Banana plants, headache pills, pillows, candle stumps, spilled coffee, electrical outlets, and cigarettes look back at us with a skeptical, almost oppositional gaze. Everything is brought to life. Or, as Rainer Maria Rilke puts it in the 1908 poem Archaic Torso of Apollo, in which the observer of a statue missing its head becomes the observed: “… for there is no place that does not see you.”

Often, several of the humoristic aggregate states of Basil’s archetype – which seem to make eye contact with us – cavort within the same composition. This gives the impression that a person has been fanned out into all of the facets of its character. They are alter egos that seem to bear witness to self-reflection and self-realization – as well as to the discrepancy between self-perception and the perception by others. It is the artist – and at the same time it is not. For, although Basil always paints himself, we can’t consider the paintings as self-portraits. Basil’s uniform color planes and reduced palette more than generously brush aside snapshot moments, realisms, and details. Rather, the paintings generalize and abstract. They explore possibilities in the past, present, and future. Through a nesting of spaces and pictorial narratives that cite, above all, the artist’s own present and past work, the compositions sometimes even address everything all at once. They negotiate transformations, transit zones, and aggregate states. It is hardly a matter of specificity: just as the prototype barely shows any facial expression, the artist has decided not to give titles to any of his works.

To accompany the exhibition is the first publication on the artist published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, featuring an essay by art historian Sebastian Preuss.

The visual world of Alexander Basil, born in Russia in 1997 and raised in Germany, is of remarkable stylistic and motivic coherence and mastery. Almost all of Basil’s paintings are populated by a certain “prototype.” That is a bald man with rosy skin, curvy limbs and beautifully adorned chest hair. The almond-shaped eyes never lose their skeptical expression, perhaps because the figure is always unprotected from the viewer’s sharp gaze in multiple ways. Often the man is unclothed, revealing, for example, delicate scars on the chest that testify to a gender reassignment that has taken place. Basil’s “prototype,” an abstracted self-portrait, is usually encountered in two aggregate states. On the one hand, we see him in domestic, often intimate situations – for example, in bed, in the kitchen, or else with a partner. Erotic and sexual poses potentiate the voyeuristic moment. On the other hand, we encounter the ciphered face in objects and animals, such as a candle, a carnivorous plant, a tap, or a housefly. Often several of these humoristic aggregate states of the “archetype” cavort in the same composition. This gives the impression that a person has been fanned out into all his or her character facets. Basil assembles alter egos that bear witness to self-reflection, self-questioning, and self-becoming – and perhaps also to the discrepancy between self-perception and the perception of others.

Basil thus follows in the footsteps of the art-historical tradition of the artist’s self-portrait. However, this is not like, say, Rembrandt who seismographically traced his biographical and artistic successes and failures in the wrinkles of his face. Through the ever-similar, stereotypical form without great gestures or facial expressions, the portraits rather become a kind of placeholder, a universally valid projection surface. The viewer could just as well be the bather, the dripping faucet, or the pigeon on the window sill. While the alter egos articulate very little, the objects seem all the more “speaking.” Here a bottle of wine is poured into the sink as a symbol of ecstasy, excess and addictive behavior. There, a tiny bunch of keys is far too small for a giant hand that will not be able to actually use it and, therefore, will not reach its goal. All these symbolic images revolve around a large thematic field, which can be labeled with interaction and articulation. How do we relate to ourselves? How to the outside world? What are we capable of – and what not? What do we articulate to ourselves and to others? What do we reveal? And what stays hidden? Basil’s painterly realization is as consistent, clear, and almost dissecting as his surreal motivic spectrum and the questions raised. He works with even, flat oil layers, clear contours and strong contrasts.

Basil studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. His professors include Tomma Abts, Elizabeth Peyton, Daniel Richter and Kirsi Mikkola. Since graduating in 2022, the artist lives in Berlin. In September 2023, Galerie Judin will present the first solo exhibition with the artist, accompanied by a first comprehensive monograph published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.