Lipont Gallery is excited to present artist Daniil Alikov’s genre-defying body of work, NEW BEAUTY, to Metro Vancouver’s audiences from Dec 3 2022 to Jan 6 2023.
Originally a virtual visualist, Alikov has leaped into the practice of fine art and has gone beyond the visual. He produces conceptual artworks that blend the border of two-dimensional and three-dimensional art. The intricately-overlapped and embossed canvases, strips of gradient materials, drawn patterns and symbols create an illusionistic dimension. The hard edges, symmetrical curves and the non-narratives speak of scientific systems, futuristic notions, and fashion metaphors.
Currently, he is working his way into the seventh “generation” of this series, which started with black and white, sharp-contrast, two-dimensional canvases, was developed into more pristine black fields, and currently progressed on, to mixed-media sculptural objects that he calls assemblages.
The materiality aspect of the recent Generation 6 and Generation 7 makes it as if the artist is venturing from order to relative disorder, from simplicity to richness, from monotonic to chromatic. Either entangled, sewn together or carefully arranged and layered, the materials such as nylon straps and buckles, translucent glassine, reflective fabrics, zippers, elastic fasteners, and hand-made mini domes show a bit of the veteran visual effect artist’s “cyber soul”, which is a liberating approach to fine art. Alikov’s exhibition, NEW BEAUTY, is free of social and cultural boundaries. It invites the audience to examine their cognition from within and through the phenomenon called “artistic creation”.
Daniil Alikov – Biography
Daniil Alikov was born in 1980 in Western Siberia, USSR. His father was a historian and mother is a piano teacher.
Post-soviet grey reality of 80's contrasted a lot with the extraordinary talent of a young boy who had a vivid imagination and started early on poetry, music and drawing. In his teens Daniil got interested in computer graphics which then became a pivotal moment in his development as a visual artist. Despite hard times in the history of Russia at that time Daniil was totally obsessed with new technologies and he put all his efforts in not only educating himself and learning new software but also in becoming a skilled professional in the field of graphic design and computer graphics in particular.
After leaving his hometown in 2007 Daniil moves to Moscow and then Singapore and Canada working as a digital artist in the Visual Effects (VFX) industry he gets credited in many blockbuster movies such as Avengers: Endgame, Deadpool, Star Wars and Transformers to name a few.
Once acquired one skill, Daniil Alikov looks for new ways of self-realization which, in 2014, brings him into Fine Arts. Without any academic background, not knowing anything about art history or contemporary art Daniil gets fully immersed into a fascinating and alluring art world. Self-educating again, reading, listening to lectures and interviews, visiting art galleries and museums and, of course, practising art himself Daniil experiments, changes styles, exploring different approaches and materials, restlessly and passionately devoting himself to this new endeavour. Being a delicate and thoughtful artist, Alikov creates a new visual language where rules are modifiable and variations are infinite.
Daniil Alikov – Artist Statement
I make new beauty.
My art has no meaning other than to be new and beautiful.
- Daniil Alikov, 2022
But... I heard the artist's statement must be longer. Well, below you got some additional reflections.
The art I make is purely abstract and non-objective. It's mostly inspired by fashion, design, technology, Internet culture and futuristic fantasies.
I constantly develop my visual language which I build as an universal set of elements with a potential to be perfectly combined with each other in any configuration.
I like breakthroughs and novelties. Also I like to expand my style by breaking my own rules. That's how my things grow. By rebuilding themselves.
I'm a lazy artist. I don't want to explain my art. First, because pure abstract art doesn't need that. Secondly, because I simply don't know. This is the truth I would like to share with you. For some things I'm not intelligent enough and I don't think I really need to be.
