Alexei Lantsev

Counterpoints: Contemporary Russian Art at Wolfson College

Sat 22 October 2016 - Sun 26 February 2017

Wolfson College

Born in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, Alexei Lantsev graduated from the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow (the Russian Academy of Art) in 1996 where he also occasionally teaches. He is known as a leading Russian colourist continuing in a long tradition of the Russian avant-garde moving fluidly from the figurative to the abstract in constant experimentation with light and colour, mixing of methods and a search for new techniques and approaches.

The exhibition's title - Counterpoints - alludes to the artist's aim of finding a balance between the sensory and the structured; the emotional and the logical and in this case the figurative and the abstract. In this show different levels of abstraction are presented through a series of monumental still livfe and evocative landscape - including those of Cambridge. The notion of 'Counterpoints' parallels the musical term however, one in which aesthetic elements that are structurally dependent on each other must be balanced with visually independent expressions of colour and form.

Paintings from his most recent 2016 series 'Depth of Understanding' explore the ways in which a 'resolution' (including that of an international conflict) are often illusive and fleeting. They provide a subtle reflection on the socio-political context in which the artist exists. His Travel Sketches series is an engaging perspective on the rhythm and colour of life in cities around the world - including in Cambridge - whether in the morning flurry of students cycling to lectures or the stillness of the mist settling at dusk over the Cam.

Alexei has participated in a large number of solo and group exhibitions in Russia and internationally. His work appears in private and public collections in France, Hong Kong, Great Britain, USA, Germany, Israel, Switzerland and Russia, including those of Deutsche Bank, Standard & Poor, Raiffeisen Bank, National Bank of Iceland, Clifford Chance, Novosibirsk Art Museum and Abramtsevo Museum, Moscow.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Anna M Dempster, College Research Associate, in conjunction with the Wolfson Fine Arts Committee. All works are available to buy.

Cost: free