Alexander Kushnaryov

Alexander was born in Baku, on the Caspian seashore. He began an art career in the early 1980s as a performance artist, later he created masks and light-bulb frames to enforce visual elements of his acts.
Soon Alexander becomes raising star and contributor to many local underground art zines. While he worked as an aerospace engineer, he commenced small totem carvings on frames of wooden crates, which exported to different parts of Europe and Asia. His coworkers were very confused and disturbed by his “small totem” pieces, and they called it “unwanted.” The idea of “unwanted art” hunted Alexander and he self-curated “Unwanted Exhibitions”, he placed his sculptures on plates of unsuspected restaurant costumers, and semi-barricade dark alleyways with charcoal drawings on wooden crates. The reason behind it was to capture a reaction of people when art invades their private space without notice.
Next step for him was “Unseen Exhibitions” – show his art for eight hours in unpopulated places like shipyard at night (“Viewed by Gulls and stay Dogs”), abandoned house (“Viewed by Rats & Cockroaches), mountain lake (Viewed by Sheep & Shepard with Dogs). Alexander’s mock-exhibitions was a response to how state art institutions, museums deal...