“Planet Topspin: Alexander Iskin at Track 16 Gallery, by James Scarborough

INTRODUCTION.

What the world needs now is an updated metaphor for the human condition. One that captures the anxiety, uncertainty, and glibness of a digitally-infused social media global culture that flickers furiously with zeroes and ones, signifying nothing.

Enter Alexander Iskin (interview here). At times, you can barely recognize the Berlin-based artist’s figures. An arm or shin, an elbow or knee, a torso, aslant, askew, and asunder. At other times, fully-formed figures hurdle an obstacle strewn picture plane like a De Chirico athlete on a Greek vase. Each figure seeks but fails to gain purchase on a ground that crumbles like a Cubist earthquake. Engulfs like a German Expressionist tsunami. Pelts like an Orphist hurricane.

Compositionally, it’s an uneasy relationship of figure to ground. Emotionally, it’s an existential Sig alert. This is Seismic Abstraction, the never-ending ass-over-tea kettle attempt to navigate a new world with neither a lodestar nor a compass, much less a GPS.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT? “Highly influenced by Gilles Deleuze’s concepts in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Iskin attempts to keep in mind that representational cliches are ripe within the artist’s mind before even paint touches blank canvas. This wrestling with how representational images are stored in the consciousness is one of the themes of his work. This gave birth to his “interreality” painting process, where he purposely consumes large amounts of information through the Internet, and then paints (oil is his preferred medium), attempting to let loose subconscious imagery. Iskin’s work emerges from his ideas about “interreality” which is the world between digital and physical existence.

WHY DOES IT MATTER? The work describes the impotence that masquerades for significance when you try to solve digital world problems with anachronistic, analog tools.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT?

The frantic canvases. They look fractured, splintered, and shattered. Like a rock through a stained glass window. They’re compelling, if disorienting, the way a kaleidoscope is compelling, if disorienting.
Though it’s unlikely that Mr. Iskin consciously coordinated his color schemes with the science of plate tectonics, his balance of complementary color suggests two kinds of earthquakes. Tranverse, in which plates move from side to side. And thrust, which throws up side of a fault up over the other. In any event, the color makes the work pictorially dynamic.
As seen in his art and performances based on technology, his relationship to social media is, to use a phrase from a problematic platform, complicated.

WHAT IF I JUST HAD 10 (OR LESS) MINUTES? Watch this video (4:21) based on his opening night performance.

WHO SHOULD SEE IT? Anyone who likes cheeky and profound, visually and conceptually engaging art and performance.

THE VERDICT? It’s a go. Planet Topspin is a thoughtful, stimulating, and timely exhibition whose merry-go-round visuals and incisive concepts seamlessly pair to describe our zeitgeist.

HOW DO I VISIT? Gallery hours are 12 – 6 p.m., Wednesday – Saturday. The exhibition runs until October 6. The Gallery is located at 1206 Maple Avenue, #1005, Los Angeles 90015. For more information, call (310) 815-8080 or visit here.