Alexey Lazarev
Alexey Lazarev
Website: alexey-lazarev.com
Instagram: @blackmelt
Bio: Born in St-Petersburg (Russia), I immigrated to Canada in 2012 and have been living in Montreal since then. I graduated with distinction from Concordia University in 2019. In 2020, I participated in two artist residencies: Pilotenkueche in Leipzig (Germany) and Studio Kura in Itoshima (Japan). In 2020-21, I received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec. My work has been shown in Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Russia, Spain and the United States. Several group exhibitions are scheduled for the second half of 2021 in Armenia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Artist Statement: My artistic practice concerns topics that revolve around migration from a perspective of a queer person. Working from both observation and imagination, my art is figurative in nature. Over the years, I’ve developed a habit of everyday drawing that now connects different aspects of my art making whether it is an invented place etched on a ceramic plate, a doodle developed into a large-scale print or a realistic rendering of a person or an object. Though I work with a variety of mediums, I see myself primarily as a printmaker and oil painter. I am familiar with the majority of contemporary printing techniques including monotype, screenprinting, etching and relief. Woodcut has been one of my favourite methods of image-making because of its immediate connection to drawing, rich history and presence in different cultures from west to east and from north to south. When carving a woodblock, I see my plate as a sheet of paper and my carving tools as drawing devices. This helps me to achieve a variety of tonalities and to create an expansive vocabulary of mark-making on par with brushes and pencils. I’m inspired by the works of the Japanese printmakers of the Edo period (Hiroshige, Hokusai), painters David Salle and Jules de Balincourt, and Canadian printmaker Sean Caulfield.