The Cause Lies in the Future

Interrealism: Spaces Beyond Traditional Models

Alexander Iskin (b. Moscow, 1980; lives and works in Berlin) harnesses painting, sculpture, performance, literary writing, and film to weave a multimedia narrative. Painting, in a sense, is the “native language” sustaining his exploration of the interplay between digital and analog processes. Under the title Interrealism, Iskin, who was awarded the Goslarer Kaiserring working artist's fellowship in 2020, pursues the creation of novel formations, what he describes as correlations between virtual and physical realities. The concept of the symbiotic formation becomes tangible in the performance Arturbating (2020), a live transmission of Iskin's self-isolating at Galerie SEXAUER in Berlin. The performance served as a preparatory stage for artist's fellowship exhibition in Goslar. After registering on a chat platform, the gallery's visitors were able to watch the performance online. In the subsequent exhibition project for the Mönchehaus Museum, he then showcased the works whose genesis his audience had observed on the live feed during his sixty-day confinement at the gallery.

The title of the publication accompanying the exhibition, which may be translated as The Cause Lies in the Future, is a paradox first articulated by Joseph Beuys. If we assume that artists are like seismographs, attuned to shifting social realities that will only become relevant in the future, Beuys's claim appears quite plausible. Iskin's painting likewise melds both spheres: fragmented human and animal figures float over multidimensional color fields that can be rotated on the wall to realize a variety of painterly formations. The catalogue is the first publication to present a comprehensive survey of the artist's growing oeuvre and documents his fellowship exhibition in Goslar. With an introduction by Bettina Ruhrberg, an essay by Leonie Pfennig, and an epilogue by Michael Büchting.