SERGEI ISUPOV

SERGEI ISUPOV

CV
BIO
WORKSHOPS

Estonian-American, b. 1963 Stavropole, USSR,
lives and works between Cummington, MA, USA and Tallinn, Estonia

Sergei Isupov is an Estonian-American sculptor internationally known for his highly detailed, narrative works. Isupov explores painterly figure-ground relationships, creating surreal sculptures with a complex artistic vocabulary that combines two- and three-dimensional narratives and animal/human hybrids. He works in ceramics using traditional hand-building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form with narrative painting using colored stains highlighted with clear glaze.

Isupov has a long international resume with work included in numerous collections and exhibitions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum Angewandte in Kunst, Germany, and in the US at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Museum of Arts and Design, Museum of Fine Arts–Boston, Museum of Fine Arts–Houston, Mint Museum of Art, and Racine Art Museum. In 2017, his solo exhibition at The Erie Art Museum presented selected works in a 20-year career survey titled Hidden Messages, followed by Surreal Promenade e, another survey solo in 2019 at the Russian Museum of Art in Minnesota.

ON HIS WORK

Often called an erotic Surrealist for his daring representations of sexuality, relationships, and human encounter, Isupov takes narrative subject matter and merges it with ceramic sculptural form. Drawing on personal experience, and human observation, he creates works that integrate autobiography with universal narrative.

He states, “Everything that surrounds and excites me is automatically processed and transformed into…an artwork. […] The essence of my work is not in the medium or the creative process, but in the human beings and their incredible diversity. When I think of myself and my works, I’m not sure I create them, perhaps they create me.”

While the robust, and racially distinct facial traits make each sculpture unique, they also make the body of work capable of representing universal experiences. The bold color palette, heavily tattooed faces, and textured surfaces relate these works to the aesthetics of traditional Russian art, as well as to contemporary styles of illustration.

“My work portrays characters placed in situations that are drawn from my imagination but based on my life experiences.  My art works capture a composite of fleeting moments, hand gestures, eye movements that follow and reveal the sentiments expressed.  These details are all derived from actual observations but are gathered or collected over my lifetime.  Through the drawn images and sculpted forms, I capture faces, body types and use symbolic elements to compose, in the same way as you might create a collage.  These ideas drift and migrate throughout my work without direct regard to specific individuals, chronology or geography.  Universalism is implied and personal interpretation expected.   Through my work I get to report about and explore human encounters, comment on the relationships between man and woman, and eventually their sexual union that leads to the final outcome – the passing on of DNA which is the ultimate collection – a combined set of genes and a new life, represented in the child.”

CURRENT + RECENT EXHIBITIONS

SELECT PAST EXHIBITIONS

• ART MACAO: Macao International Art Biennale 2021
• ABOUT FACE: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture
• COOL CLAY: Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Ceramics | Crocker Art Museum
• COMPOSING FORM | Helen Day Art Center
• SURREAL PROMENADE: Sergei Isupov at Russian Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN
• DIRECTIONS: Sergei Isupov
• ALICE IN WONDERLAND
• SERGEI ISUPOV: Selections from Hidden Messages
• SERGEI ISUPOV: The Rising
• RE—Reanimate, Repair, Mend and Meld
• MENDED WAYS | The Art of Inventive Repair
• SERGEI ISUPOV: Head On
• SERGEI ISUPOV at Kasher | Potamkin
• NCECA 2015 Conference: “Lively Experiments”
• EVERYTHING IS ALL WHITE: The New Year Show
• A CLAY BESTIARY
• PROMENADE: New Work by Sergei Isupov
• HERE AND THERE
• JOHN MICHAEL KOHLER ARTS CENTER 40th ANNIVERSARY
• RAM COLLECTION FOCUS: Sergei Isupov
• SERGEI ISUPOV: Call of the Wild
• INCITEFUL CLAY
• BODY & SOUL
• CLAY BODIES: A Group Exhibition of Figural Ceramic Sculpture
• ANIMAL STORIES
• EXPOSED: Heads, Busts & Nudes
• SERGEI ISUPOV: Hidden Messages

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