Alexandr Sokolov

Lives and works in Moscow, Russia

Artist statement

Through my visual, installation, and digital art, I tackle the themes of cultural polyphony and the history of games, drawing inspiration from the works of Mikhail Bakhtin and Dominique Lopes. The aesthetics of hip-hop, manga, and video games dominated my childhood in the 1990s. This visual culture mixes ethnic, industrial, and fantasy motives into a single coherent entity. The infoscape of modernity is constantly complicated by the cross-pollination and collision of different, often conflicting cultures. As an artist split between two world views – the global Western and the local Russian - I possess a consciousness that functions on both these plains. By working with games and playing with components, I want to give another interpretation to globalism. By their very nature games are a unifying force. They are an instrument of simplifying complexities, diminishing inner-tension, and solving cross-cultural conflict. Gaming symbols, forms, and rules are inclusively non-discriminatory and create a synergy of motion between the players, bringing their cultural norms into harmony for the duration of the match. By working with games, one can produce a relevant and significant reply to the world’s current state.

Artwork