He was born in 1957. In 1984, he graduated from the Kyiv State Art Institute. Since 1987 - a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. Oleksiy Vladimirov's name is well known both in Ukraine and abroad. Alksey Volodymyrov's works are in the National Museum of Ukrainian Art, the National History Museum of Kyiv, the Museum of Modern Art of Kyiv, as well as in galleries and private collections in Austria, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, Japan, and the USA. The artist finds his style of "plastic universalism based on associative symbolism." According to American critics, during a personal exhibition in California, O. Vladimirov's works defined the "New Era of Sculpture"
Sculptor - "My whole life as an artist is a painful search for its meaning. I try to read the writings of God when cutting a stone, there is not much extra in the block of stone , you just have to have time to see it.”

Critical text by Senior Art Curator Silvia Grassi

“My whole life as an artist is a painful search for its meaning. I try to read the writings of God when I cut a stone, there is not much extra in the block of stone, you just have to have time to see it.” (Oleksiy Vladimirov)

Deciding to dedicate your life to art is a true vocation. You feel driven by that inexplicable force that moves the artist to create, to unleash his creativity, that ancestral, spiritual force. When inspiration touches the artist's mind, it must then inevitably explode into creation. The artist feels that irrepressible desire to always find a new medium through which to express himself, a new expressive form.
And here an image of the mind, a thought, finally takes shape, taking on a physical substance, which can be seen, touched, experienced and shared with those who observe it.
This is precisely what distinguishes the life of the talented Ukrainian artist Oleksiy Vladimirov.

The artist defines his style as “Associative symbolism in plastic universalism”, because each of his works has a series of associations of meanings and symbols. Each sculpture tells a story, has its own intrinsic meaning, symbolizes a particular aspect of the artist's life, experience and interiority, but through which we can reflect ourselves and often rediscover ourselves. Matter becomes meaning, symbol, story.

The artist reflects in his works his own life, his own thoughts, what happens inside him and around him. The last year for the artist who has Ukrainian origins has inevitably influenced his creative process. Such a difficult and emotionally heavy period changed everything. Those who experience a war first-hand learn to re-evaluate what is truly important and priority. Every thought becomes dark, but we must force ourselves to react. And, precisely because of this war, the artist made the painful decision to start a new life, in a new country, Italy: this therefore led to a radical change in his life which is also reflected, inevitably, in his works, through new ideas, new images, new plasticity.

The artist's aim is to find the meaning of his life and he does this through his works and his creativity. It is the stone itself that often guides the artist: its structure directs the project, the shapes, the lines. Thus begins that profound dialogue between matter and spirit, in the strenuous search for the meaning of life, of truth, of expression.

If you think about it for a moment: from a single blank piece, little by little, a shape begins to appear, the material one that had its own life before comes to have a new meaning. Form and meaning will represent the materialization of an idea, a thought, a sensation that was in the sculptor's mind. The great sculptor Michelangelo stated that the sculpture is already found inside the stone; the creative act of the sculptor consists in eliminating everything superfluous that prevents the statue from coming to light and manifesting itself. With his actions, the sculptor "frees" the statue that is inside that block of stone. The sculptor gives life, like a modern demiurge. He gives shape to matter and thought. Yes, because sculpting is not simply digging a stone, but finding the breath of life in it and revealing it to the world.
For this occasion we will be able to observe six wonderful works by the sculptor, in which we can observe a very versatile style, with soft, sinuous, clean lines.
Different types of materials, thanks to a different consistency, temperature and malleability, allow a different type of expression for the artist.

First of all we can observe a splendid homage to the land that welcomed him, Tuscany, with a stupendous representation of the sinuosity of its hills put in relation with the sinuosity of the female body, and through its white marble, excellence in the world. In the rest of tired limbs the body returns to the earth and nature, to the peace and perfection that it represents. The artist, in the work "Mestical hills of Tuscany" transports us into a landscape that becomes mystical under his sculptural gestures.
The same marble is also used by the artist in the sculpture "Ascension", in which the sculpture seems to want to take flight, detach itself from the ground and hover in the air, towards the sky, towards the divine. From the raw Earth, two wings open and unfold to detach themselves from the sound and its raw humanity, to reach the joy and perfection of the sky. The artist manages to give incredible lightness to such a hard and strong material.

Bronze is certainly completely different as a material to work with, of which we see here two splendid sculptural examples by the artist, so different from each other, both in terms of lines, workmanship and above all meaning. In “Running to the Crown” grace, elegance and femininity unfold through the material, in a harmony of contrasts: shine and opacity, volume and thinness, lines and curves. The artist managed to capture here and freeze forever in time a single moment, a single gesture, a single movement, however made up of a thousand facets. In the other bronze work "Fear" the artist managed to give a visual and material representation of this feeling that often grips man. Yes, because fear keeps us tied, blocks us, petrifies us in the face of situations, we feel inert, incapable of facing it and therefore we freeze and surrender to it. This is a feeling that unites each of us and, most of all, certainly a people forced to experience a war in their own country.

In the last two works, the absolute protagonist is the sinuosity of the forms. In the first “Revealing the Truth” we see the symbol of sinuosity par excellence: the female body, which is slowly revealing itself to the world, is showing us all its beauty. This dialogue between different stones gives dynamism and movement to an apparently static figure, but which, if observed carefully, we see her stripping away all her physical and emotional veils, to show us the most authentic truth. In the work "Passion Androgyne" we can actually observe the female and male bodies intersecting and merging in an incredible sinuosity of lines, obviously given by the artist's skill, but also by the extraordinary veins of this Indian marble used. As well as the different processing of the material they give us the sensation of different textures, different softness or rigidity. The lives of two people who encounter passion give life to a new being, to a new self made of union and complicity.

Sculpting means stopping energy to contemplate it, capturing vitality to tame it and nourish it. (Michel Onfray)

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