Isupov, Sergei (b. 1963, Stavrapole, Russia, lives in MA) graduated from the Art Institute of Tallinn, Estonia in 1990 with a BA/MFA in Ceramics. In 1994 he immigrated to the United States. Isupov has a long international resume with work included in numerous collections and exhibitions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (TX), Museum of Arts and Design (NY), Racine Art Museum (WI) and Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MA). His work is featured in numerous books, catalogs and magazines including Postmodern Ceramics, Sex Pots: Eroticsm in Ceramics, The Ceramic Surface; Shy Boy, She Devil, and Isis: The Art of Conceptual Craft; Confrontational Ceramics. He teaches workshops and lectures internationally at museums, universities and art centers. Recent residencies include Archie Bray Foundation, Helena (MT), The International Ceramics Studio, Kecskemét, Hungary and Guldagergaard, International Ceramic Research Center, Skælskør, Denmark. In 2001 was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. He works in porcelain using traditional hand building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form with narrative painting using stains and clear glaze.
Isupov strange, surreal deformations of human character merge observation and imagination, creating a ‘collage’ of memory and fleeting reference that captures images, faces and movements in sculptural object. ‘Rotation’ seems to merge several recognisable shapes into a compound of human, demon, animal and elemental; the artist using a theatrical selection of colour for impressively detailed surface painting that adds further reference, additional landscape and more figurative elements into the two-dimensional plane of the hand-thrown body. Disassociation with gender plays heavily across the artists work, and here bodies embrace androgyny or find a harmonising mirror image of male and female.
