Kirill Basalaev
London, United Kingdom
Kirill Basalaev, born in 1988 in Tomsk, Siberia; he studied at The Tomsk State University (faculty of Art and Culture) until 2009 and continued his education in Moscow at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Art Theory faculty) in 2014-2015.
His recent body of works includes paintings and sculptures with plaster as the main medium. Kirill’s works explore interrelation of human and urban environment. The city is perceived as a living structure, where shards, cracks, bricks constitute evidence of its “vitality” and “mortality”. Becoming a witness to these living processes, Kirill not only registers them on the surface of a canvas, but as the plaster fixes itself on the canvas, he also “remembers” himself at this particular point.
During many years of his artistic practice, Kirill reached the conclusion that memory is inseparable from the object that represents it. A specific memory originated in a certain place is the basis of all subsequent memories of the place. Thus, a new memory about oneself becomes only a memory of memories of the place.
