Alexander Stolin

"Face Painting" -- Oil Painting by Alexander Stolin

2023

ALEXANDER STOLIN, born and raised in Kiev, Ukraine (under the former Soviet Socialist Republic), where he received intensive training and a master of fine arts degree in his homeland’s traditional art academies. He immigrated to San Francisco in 1992, met his future wife in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, then married and settled in New Orleans. He maintains a home and studio in Madisonville, Louisiana, and is a significant but understated figure in the New Orleans art community. As art critic D. Eric Bookhardt suggested in 2002, “Stolin is more accomplished than he is famous.” His art, often exhibited in thematic series that incorporate a variety of media, ranges from intimate portraits to large-scale murals (one measuring twelve feet by seventy-two feet). He has worked on a progressively larger scale, most recently designing and painting projects for the Louisiana film industry. Stolin’s technically proficient and complexly layered art reflects a unique fusion of the academic training he received in Kiev and his evolving response to the very different culture, lifestyle, and subject matter he has discovered in New Orleans, Madisonville, and the Gulf South.   Stolin’s Face to Face series of portraits, completed from 2000 to 2002, featured New Orleans artists including Douglas Bourgeois...

Michael Tole says of his work… This painting reimagines the moment when Cleopatra contemplates suicide after her battlefield loss to Octavian. In this revisionist history, Cleopatra thinks better of suicide, and at the last minute redirects her servants to pass the basket of fruit with the asp on to the triumphant Octavian who sweeps in with his entourage. In this scene, Octavian reaches for an apple, triggering the asp to strike. This, like most of my recent work, reimagines historical, mythological, and literary motifs to destabilize the inherent power structures within those narratives. The style adopted is Rococo, which coincided with the rise of Colonialism. The style therefore relates to the historical narrative of this piece which shows the conquest and colonization of a colonial ruler. In my current work, The Revisionist Histories, I am writing letters to art history, literature, and mythology in an attempt to reflect the social changes that have reshaped our society over the past century.  As part of this agenda, I explore the evolution of gender norms, power dynamics, and representation within Western visual culture and what this implies for the negotiation between pleasure, justice, and our culturally specific discourse on beauty.    The seed for The Revisionist Histories was sewn when I caught a glimpse of my preteen daughters watching music videos on their iPad as I chopped veggies for dinner.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught glimpses of music videos featuring Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, and Doja Cat gyrating across the tiny screen.  A better parent might have snatched the iPad away, but I was overcome with hallucinatory visions of this pop diva...