Alexander Arshansky

A Cubist Abstract Portrait, "Catfishing"

2024

Alexander Arshansky is a Russian-born artist and a recent transplant to the West Coast who works in a style he has deemed “Biomorphic Cubism”. This style could be best described as a combination of Biomorphic Abstraction, with Cubist style compositions, along with two-dimensional inner details. Arshansky is a self-taught artist with a scientific and technical background. His artwork tells stories through hidden and overt symbolism among intricate patterns and color spaces. There is a story within a story, revealed only to those who spend time to observe. Arshansky declares: “I want to please the eye by challenging the mind.” Arshansky is a prolific artist with over 850 paintings produced in the last 7 years. Each piece takes many hours or even days to create, however he works quickly for the high level of detail in each work. The layering and detailed imagery make his works deep and complex, reflecting his emotional state while he creates each piece. Arshansky advises, “Acclaim and recognition, although ever tempting, are not the driving motivation, rather the compulsive need for the process: fulfilling the life purpose of creating a chain reaction of inspired minds in all creative forms of expression to make this world more beautiful, advanced, complex and magical.” He created many of his pieces while working as a translator on the phone, allowing his words to flow together with the physical act of painting. Arshansky’s works have been placed in collections worldwide, notably in the private collection of Comedian Margaret Cho, among others. Art critic Charles Pilar declares, “I have found myself viewing his work and spending a long period of time at each piece intrigued by the story within. I have also found when I view that same piece again later, I see something I had missed the first time. This is a very unique talent. I highly recommend seeing his art as it is very powerful and you will find your mind opened with the messages within his work.” Art critic Andrew Printer notes, “Alex isn’t painting just anything, mind you; he isn’t absentmindedly filling canvases with blocks of red or blue. No, Alex is interpreting settlement issues and medical matters while constructing extremely intricate and amazingly sophisticated surreal images.”