LENIN NO. 5

Oleksandr Balbyshev, Ukraine

Oleksandr Balbyshev was born in 1985 in Ukraine, one of the biggest Soviet Republics. After graduating from The Prydniprovska State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture in 2012, he was working in the sphere of architecture and design. But he was disappointed in the chosen field. So in 2016 he quit to become an artist. Oleksandr currently lives and works in Dnipro, Ukraine. Male sexuality and sensuality are the most important themes in Oleksandr’s art. But it's a means rather than an end in itself. Artist wants viewer to see the realm of ideas in faces and bodies not only a realistic image of a human. He tries to combine in his paintings realities, as visions of worlds within worlds. They show us an image of ourselves, and also hint that there is more to us than we know. Another important part of Oleksandr’s art is to modify old Soviet-era portraits of Lenin. In 2015 the Ukrainian government banned all symbols and images associated with the USSR. But numerous oil portraits, sculptures, monuments and other images of Lenin began to be removed from public places decades before the "decommunization laws". What happened to the hundreds of thousands portraits of former Soviet leader? Many of them are already destroyed. Some of them had been left in attics or basements. Oleksandr is looking for all these forgotten things and giving them a new life. His paintings are in private collections in USA, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Finland, South Africa, Thailand, Australia, Mexico and Ukraine.