Alexander Krolikowski

Alexander Krolikowski

a Ukraine-based multidisciplinary conceptual artist.

Alexander (born 1982, Donetsk, Ukraine) was a student of Michael Hofstetter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Inspired by his studies of post-postmodernism, Alexander has used various artistic mediums to explore the intersection between speculative, futuristic design and society’s need to re-think our cultural and technological heritage. In his art, he explores issues of trust and knowledge in a post-truth era, as well as the inevitability of change in life.

Alexander has taken a particular interest in the rising communication crisis in the age of digital technologies and has begun to explore alternative forms of communication in his artwork. In his projects, he uses radios, morse coding and satellite technology to explore the very nature of communication, expression and reflection.

Alexander had been working in collaboration with Alexandra Krolikowska since 2007, stepping away in 2022 to begin his first solo period as an artist. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Alexander shifted his artistic interest to a contemporary rethinking of classical artistic themes: death, belief, and trust.

Works

Satellite photography, glitches.

2022

The “Overview” project is a series of photographs of the Earth’s surface, made by meteorology satellites. Alexander Krolikowski have taken these images using radio stations, receiving the sound first and then decoding it to the image. These photographs combine the “overview effect” with unique glitches which are conditioned by interferences and the strength of the signal. Overviewing effect is reached by the fact that basically, these photographs are selfies, taken from orbit. But unlike the self-focused “earthly” selfies these ones are not corrupted by people’s troubles, national issues, and geopolitical conflicts. Instead, we see the beauty of our home planet Earth and abstract shapes of the clouds which remind us about our world’s fragility under the inevitability of climate change.

Supernova (in collaboration with Alexandra Krolikowska)

Analog Collages 2017

In this project, the artists were working with the derelict PromPrylad plant, a major mechanical manufacturing plant during the height of the Soviet era, in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. In recent years, a local cultural organisation bought a section of PromPrylad’s real estate and commissioned the Krolikowski Art Duo to make artwork that commemorated the history of the site. The artists aimed to connect the past to the present, showing the shift from material production (heavy industry) to the production of ideas (culture, education, and artwork). Drawing from PromPrylad’s old photo archives, images of ancient and modern mythology, and theories of developmental psychology, the Krolikowski Art Duo have created an installation of 8 collages. Each piece captures a certain stage of human life and juxtaposes it against a certain stage of a star’s life, providing a celestial lens through which the viewer can understand it: the cyclicality of life.

The Modern Newts (in collaboration with Alexandra Krolikowska)

Multimedia Installation

(sculpture, digital photo collage, ASCII art, social media art, installation) 2017

During the art residency at PRAM (Prague, Czech Republic) Krolikowski Art duo has investigated the methods of information warfare. Aiming to highlight the particular ways of manipulation by mass opinion, artists displayed the main definitions through various art objects. Inspired by the “War with the Newts” novel by Czech writer Karel Čapek (1936), and discovering parallels with the modern geopolitical situation. Artists used novel’s characters – salamanders, central figures to provide the artistic but objective explanation of main definitions of information warfare.

The sculpture of the raising hand represents a sockpuppet, a fake online identity used for deception. Installation made of artificial grass in the shape of cursor points on astroturfing, the way of faking the appearance of local, grass-roots activity. Digital photo collages reflect on the crucial role of media propaganda over the last ten years, showing the ghost-like salamanders as a cause of the social disturbance, political shakes, and war conflicts around the world.

ASCII art pieces show the very nature of information warfare, and how our thoughts, opinions, and relationships are written and programmed by the computer code.

Artists also created a small prototype of sock puppets factory, offering the viewer during the exhibition to immerse themselves into the structure of feelings of being an internet troll and use fake Facebook profiles to discover their limits of being anonymous.

Typewriting

Typewriting artworks of Alexander Krolikowski are the response to the communication crisis which have appeared as a result of the post-capitalist state of society. Shoving off from the “world as text” concept by Jacques Derrida, artist try to go further, embracing meaningless text, images, and hidden “secret messages” which can be deciphered only by an attentive viewer. Using the vintage typewriting machine from the past for nowadays messages, unveiling the problems that humankind is only about to face. Artworks is oscillating between nostalgic form and futurist content, between painstaking handwork and conceptual distinguishing, diving in empathetically and at the same time critically reviewing the situation.