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  © 2001-2022
  OkNo Gallery
  Chelyabinsk, Russia

 
EXHIBITIONS & PROJECTS

Alexander Shestakov
(Chelyabinsk)
LAND OF THE DEAF
Sculpture
May 21 - June 4, 2014

Artist Alexander Shestakov

Alexander Shestakov (b. 1974, Satka)

Graduated from secondary technical school as an excavator operator.

Since thirteen has been professionally engaged in tourism. Alexander is a multiple champion in speleological tourism. Work at complex "Magnesite", at a bakery, in a door production firm didn't bring him satisfaction. In 2004 Alexander went to Perm. There he learned to cut sculpture with a chainsaw to transfer the force of the images taken from wood in rough and laconic forms.

In the autumn of 2011 Alexander found a geoglyph on Zyuratkul mountain ridge (Satka district of Chelyabinsk region). This fact excited the press and television, having drawn close attention of scientists. The huge drawing in the form of an elk, which was put into the ground by means of stone laying, can be compared by its size with mysterious images of the Nazca desert. The story of the geoglyph opening led to Alexander's close acquaintance with a scientific world of archeologists. Megalytic cultures of antiquity captured Alexander's imagination and it was expressed in his numerous wooden objects.

The same year A. Shestakov came to Chelyabinsk. For two years he had worked on sculpture and objects at a playground of a park in the urban district of Chelyabinsk metallurgical plant. There were some series: "Pershino's inhabitants", "Spirits of the wood", "Sovok", etc. The art museum staff became interested in Alexander's creativity. But an atypical manner of his work, irony of the images seemed weird to the park administration. Alexander had to leave the job.

In April of 2014 he was invited with an exhibition project in the OkNo gallery. The opportunity to create objects for an exhibition appeared when A. Shestakov had got an order for decorating the territory of the recreation center "Boyar village" near the lake Kremenkul with landscape sculpture. "Boyar village" administration approved the idea of the exhibition and provided timber, transport and money for printing materials for the event.