SERGEI ISUPOV: Ancestor
November 1, 2024 – February 24, 2025
Cover photo: Ancestor, Installation at Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, 2024
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Anderson Gallery
Bridgewater State University
40 School Street, Bridgewater, MA
Ferrin Contemporary
54 Main Street, Cummington, MA 01026 ferrincontemporary.com info@ferrincontemporary.com
This exhibition was made possible by Jay Block at Bridgewater State University and Ferrin Contemporary.
Sergei Isupov is represented by Ferrin Contemporary, Cummington, MA.
To learn more about this exhibition and related programming, visit ferrincontemporary.com/portfolio/sergei-isupov-ancestor/
Catalog layout by Isabel Twanmo, with installation and artwork photography by Sergei Isupov, John Polak, and Ferrin Contemporary staff.
SERGEI ISUPOV:
Ancestor
November 1, 2024 – February 24, 2025
Sergei Isupov presents Ancestor, a dramatic solo exhibition featuring masterworks of figural sculpture at Anderson Gallery at Bridgewater State University. The installation creates a dialog between Isupov’s large busts and figural sculptures along with a web of narratives woven through the work’s illustrated surfaces.
Invited by Jay Block, associate director of collections and exhibitions at Bridgewater, Isupov embraced the opportunity to be an artist-curator and fill Anderson Gallery with selected works from 2008 to the present. A brilliant colorist, Sergei elected to paint the walls a deep red-orange, offsetting and highlighting the fully illustrated ceramic sculptures. Isupov’s large-scale busts from his Androgyny series and hybrid figures from his Humanimals series are placed in engaging dialogs with one another, inviting viewers to reflect on the ancestral narratives within the works and through their own family history.
“Sergei Isupov's solo exhibition explores ancestral memories that are packed within narratives drawn from traditional myths, tales and legends. The stories are veiled, cautionary warnings of those mysterious things that go bump in the night, deeply woven and textural, fascinating in appearance and bristling sharp in meaning.”
– Jay Block
Isupov’s Ancestor unites a collection of figural sculpture that shows the evolution of ideas in his work. As expressed in the characters he portrays, the sculptures’ interacting eyes and gestures activate relationships that are universal and timeless. Installed in a zig zag, this exhibition explores narratives from his past in dialog with the present, bridging memory and place in choreographed alignments.
“Regardless of our backgrounds or wherever in the world we came to be, our shared experiences as humans are interwoven and passed on from generation to generation. The exhibition Ancestor allowed me to reflect on these works and my sources of inspiration and motivation … When I think of myself and my works, I’m not sure I create them, perhaps they create me. ”
– Sergei Isupov
Born into a family of Russian artists during the USSR, Isupov spent his childhood in Kyiv, Ukraine, educated in Tallinn, Estonia, and now lives and works in Western Massachusetts.
ABOUT SERGEI ISUPOV
Sergei Isupov is an Estonian-American sculptor internationally known for his highly detailed, narrative works. Isupov explores painterly figureground relationships, creating surreal sculptures with a complex artistic vocabulary that combines two- and three-dimensional narratives and animal/human hybrids. He works in ceramics using traditional hand-building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form with narrative painting using colored stains highlighted with clear glaze.
Isupov has a long international resume with work included in numerous collections and exhibitions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum Angewandte in Kunst, Germany, and in the US at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Crocker
Art Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Museum of Arts and Design, Museum of Fine Arts–Boston, Museum of Fine Arts–Houston, Mint Museum of Art, and Racine Art Museum. In 2017, his solo exhibition at The Erie Art Museum presented selected works in a 20-year career survey titled Hidden Messages, followed by Surreal Promenade, another survey solo in 2019 at the Russian Museum of Art in Minnesota.
SERGEI ISUPOV: SERGEI ISUPOV: Ancestor, Ancestor, Installation at Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, 2024
Installation at Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, 2024
Photo courtesy of the artist. Photo courtesy of the artist.
SERGEI ISUPOV: Ancestor, Installation at Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, 2024
Photo courtesy of the artist.
FIGURAL SCULPTURE
t is a life style for me. Everything that surrounds and excites is automatically processed and transformed into the final ult: an artwork. It is fascinating to watch the transitions m life to art. The essence of my work is not in the medium the creative process, but in the human beings and their redible diversity.
nd ceramic to be the most versatile material and it is well ed to the expression of my ideas. I consider sculpture to be canvas for my paintings. All plastic, graphic and painting ments of the piece function as complementary parts of the rk.
this series of two-legged figures, Statuettes, the form is ssical but the characters are comical. I like the contrast of ous to humorous – the front is cartoonish but the back of ch figure features an intimate painting of the being’s spirit.
ile each one expresses an individual personality or aracter, as a group, they become a population, inhabitants my imaginary world or visitors from my imagination.”
ergei Isupov
"Hidden Messages", 2016, porcelain, slip, glaze, 22.5 x 8.5 x 8". John Polak Photography
"Pupeteer", 2023, porcelain, underglaze, glaze, 18.5 x 8 x 7". John Polak Photography
"Night Moves", 2019, porcelain, slip, glaze, 16 x 9 x 8". John Polak Photography
"Traditional Family" 2024 porcelain, slip, glaze 21 x 12 x 5"
"We Are All from The Sky", 2014, porcelain, slip, glaze, 15.5 x 11 x 10". John Polak Photography
"Modern Family"
porcelain, slip, glaze
22 x 12 x 6"
"Family Chess" 2024 stoneware, slip, glaze
17 x 4.5 x 5"
SERGEI ISUPOV: SERGEI ISUPOV: Ancestor, Ancestor, Installation at Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, 2024 Installation at Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, 2024
Photo courtesy of the artist. Photo courtesy of the artist.
HUMANIMALS
Sergei Isupov's Humanimals are a series of standing, oversized figurines that transform anthropomorphic animal sculptures into human-like hybrids. These works explore human relationships by blending the expression and gesture of the combined species.
A sculptural surrealist, Isupov first created works in the Humanimal Series around 2011, with a set of “standing figures” (animal/human hybrids) and “riders” (animal figures on animal/human hybrids).
In 2015, Isupov returned to his iconic form of the Humanimal, a series of standing, oversized figurines. New groups and works emerge as the artist delves into the right form for each of his concepts. Close Your Eyes Open Your Eyes, Burden II, Butterfly Catcher, Life’s Work, and Strong hail from multiple eras in the artist’s exploration of the series.
“The animal faces and features represent the beast or natural animal instincts that are often in conflict with reason and intellect.
The hand represents the hand of a human or god – both a comforting support for humanity and a force of opposition or challenge to animal instincts.
The sculptures explore these ideas of opposing forces of nature and humanity, man and beast, integral and constant throughout life. There is nothing literal intended in the choice of imagery or narrative. The images and expressions are of male/female/animal/human – they are symbolic and metaphoric, open to individual interpretation.”
– Sergei Isupov
Group of Humanimals, John Polak Photograph
"Close Your Eyes, Open Your Eyes", 2015, porcelain, slip, glaze, 16 x 11 x 7". John Polak Photography
"Butterfly Catcher", 2015, porcelain, slip, glaze, 16 x 9 x 7". John Polak Photography
porcelain, slip, glaze
15.5 x 6 x 8"
ANDROGYNY
HEADS & BUSTS
The Androgyny series of heads and busts, often with surrealistic features and complex facial expressions, was first presented by Ferrin Gallery in 2008 (Pittsfield, MA Location). The works were exhibited in his groundbreaking solo show at Mesa Contemporary Arts Center (Mesa, AZ) and traveled to the Daum Museum of Art (Sedalia, MO) in 2009. Isupov returns to this scale and series with the most recent work Heritage featured in his solo exhibition, Alliances (Keene, NH) in 2023. Select pieces remain in the artist’s archive available for exhibition, public and private collections.
"Heritage", 2023, stoneware, slip, glaze, 32 x 29 x 16". John Polak Photography.
"Seeds" 2009
stoneware, slip, glaze
29 x 19 x 18"
ANDERSON GALLERY, BRIDGEWATER STATE UNIVERSITY
The Wallace L. Anderson gallery is committed to supporting the educational and cultural mission of Bridgewater State University. Its mission is to serve as an active laboratory for the production, exhibition, and critical discussion of contemporary art. The curatorial focus is dedicated to establishing an environment of learning, enrichment and inspiration with exhibitions that illuminate the direct relationship between the Arts and Ideas. Bridgewater State University is committed to excellence in every aspect of its collections and programs which draw upon both new and traditional tools of communication, interpretation, and presentation. The gallery aims to serve its diverse public as a dynamic, innovative, and welcoming center for learning through the arts and seeks to act as a catalyst for the broader understanding and exploration of ideas across cultural and visual boundaries.
FERRIN CONTEMPORARY
For more than 40 years, Ferrin Contemporary has been a leading source for contemporary and modern ceramic art. Ferrin Contemporary serves as both a project incubator and traditional commercial gallery program. Curated exhibitions are presented by the gallery and in partnership with galleries, museums, and educational institutions throughout the country.
“My work is about contrasts and relationships. I explore contrasts of human condition with my story lines such as male-female and human-animal relationships, and accompanying emotions of warmth and aggression, love and rejection, and nurture and abandonment.
Dynamic and interactive narratives are developed using two and three dimensions at the same time with the sculpted form and painted surface. I use a visual vocabulary and classic tools of design, proportion, perspective and silhouette to both sculpt and paint. Eyes show emotional relationships. Facial and figural gestures develop personalities. Illusionary objects and perspectives suggest motion. As a viewer moves around the work, they see each angle and focus point leading to new chapters and story lines. Combined, these clues tell an overall story.”
– Sergei Isupov
SERGEI ISUPOV: SERGEI ISUPOV: Ancestor Ancestor, Installation at Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, 2024 , Installation at Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, 2024
Photo courtesy of the artist. Photo courtesy of the artist.