Nikita Alexeev (Alexei Nikitin) 12.01.1953

Alexeev was formed in the 1970s in the “mushroom house” of Moscow conceptualism. However, he ripened into a special species of “mushroom”. Conceptualism moves toward the complication of meanings, while Nikita Alexeev strives for ease and simplicity. A stranger among his own, in 1980, he left the Collective Actions group and founded APTART, which over several years shattered the foundation of conceptualism. His projects during those years (“Brief History of Modern Art, or Life and Death of Black Quadrant”, 1986) operate according to the conceptual principle that a word appeals to an image and vice versa, but Alekseev does this automatically. He does not follow flickers of meanings, but watches his hand sketching with pastels on paper, or studies a landscape. Drawing as a habit is embodied in his project “Dying Drawings.” Alexeev drew a picture every day like each was the last. Three years later he exhibited more than a thousand drawings; one-third sold. Art conquers death.

Anton Gorlenko