Alexei Biryokoff grew up in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and moved to Russia in 1990, the year before the Soviet Union fell apart. He graduated from the Barnaul State Teacher Training University in the south of Russia in 2000 with a Master of Arts degree in linguistics and literature. Since 2011 he has been living in the United States, and currently lives and works in East Vandergrift, Pennsylvania.

Biryokoff is a self-taught artist, having never attended art school, but even before he received his master’s degree in 2000 he had staged his first solo show at a small local gallery in Siberia. At that point he devoted his focus full-time to being an artist, and since then he has had nine solo shows and participated in international group shows and biennials. After receiving a grant from CEC Artslink in New York City in 2008, he visited the United States and spent five weeks in art residency in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in one of the country’s oldest art colonies in the country.

His work is predominantly large-scale paintings of naked older men who are trying to survive in the glamorous fitness model culture. His first Russian show which included nudes, in Barnaul in 2004, was considered obscene because of the male nudity, and was closed down by local officials.

Painting naked men is only one aspect of his work – one of his previous shows was dedicated to the terrorist attack in Beslan in Chechnya. He has also established a name in the experimental music scene under the stage name of Muhmood, releasing a number of records and soundtracks for art shows and collaborations with other artists.

Alexei Biryokoff’s website can be found here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for introducing us to the work of this artist, and for supplying many of the images.