RAiR Exhibition — Alex Boeschenstein (RAiR 2023)
Alex Boeschenstein
Visionary Rumor
August 19 - October 29, 2023
🔹 Artist Lecture and Opening Reception: Friday, August 25, 5:30 - 7:00 PM
Artist Dinner at AMoCA: 7:00 PM
Untitled 2, 9.5" x 13", stone lithograph, 2023
Untitled 3, 9.5" x 13", stone lithograph, 2023
Alex Boeschenstein is an interdisciplinary artist rooted in the traditions of drawing and printmaking. He uses history as raw material, processing it through conventions of assemblage, geoscience, and horror. Inspired by artists like Jill Magid and Walid Raad, Boeschenstein has developed a method of “artistic prospecting” to subvert colonial strategies through re-focusing the ethnographic gaze onto the mechanisms of power themselves. In each project, he addresses different sets of concerns, themes, and research avenues—usually influenced by region and place—by balancing fine textual analysis of archives and historical documents with fieldwork, on-site exploration, and studio experimentation.
The material production of Boeschenstein’s work aligns with varying modes of attention, in some cases obsessively focused and time-consuming; in others, haphazard and intuitive. When creating sculptures, he employs fragile materials and imbues resilient materials with provisional characteristics, such as allowing sulfur discs to crack under the pressure of their own weight. Boeschenstein fosters conspiratorial pattern misrecognitions, paranoid fantasies, and speculative fictions to highlight the unique weirdness of the times we are living in.
Alex Boeschenstein was born in 1988 in Cleveland, Ohio. He received a BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Art at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2015 and an MFA in Transmedia and Print at the University of Texas in Austin in 2022. Boeschenstein’s work has been featured in many exhibitions across the United States at venues including Glass Box Gallery in Seattle, King Street Station in Seattle, Shoreline Community College in Washington, and the Visual Arts Center in Austin.