SERGEI ISUPOV
Place of Residence: Richmond, VA
Date of Birth: August 17, 1963

Artist's Statement

Art is a lifestyle for me. Everything that surrounds and excites me is automatically processed and transformed into the final result: an artwork. It is fascinating to watch the transitions from life to art. The essence of my work is not in the medium or the creative process, but in human being and their incredible diversity. When I think of my works, and myself, I'm not sure I create them or if they create me.

I find ceramic to be the most versatile material and it is suited to the expressions of my ideas. I consider sculpture to be a canvas for my paintings. All plastic, graphic, and painting elements of the piece function as complementary parts of the work.

Biography

Sergei Isupov comes from a creative family. His mother, Nelli Isupova, is a ceramics folk artist and his father, Vladimir Isupov, and younger brother, Ilya Isupov, are painters. All three are well known artists in their home city of Kiev, Ukraine. Ceramic artist Sergei Isupov received his art education first from the Ukrainian State Art School and later at the Art Institute of Tallinn, Estonia where he was awarded both a B.A. and an M.F.A.

Isupov's professional career began in 1990 when he participated in the Oslo International Ceramic Symposium in Norway, USSR Ceramicists, a charity exposition at the Hammer Center in Moscow and in New Soviet Art at Fourth Dimension Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Isupov subsequently exhibited in group shows in the Baltics, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Seoul, Korea before emigrating from Estonia to the United States in 1994.

His work has been collected by museums in Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Norway and Hungary. In the United States, Isupov's work is in the collections of, among others, the Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, NC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.