Alexander Grahovsky

CONVERSATIONS WITH MARISOL SALANOVA. INTERVIEW PROGRAM. ART MADRID’25

Alexander Grahovsky (Alicante, 1980) begins with a chaotic or random process, similar to collecting images and creating collages from scenes that capture his interest, which he can then recreate as he pleases. His works explore themes such as the unknown, death, and animals, often drawing parallels with toys and incorporating recurring characters along with elements like floating stones. Narrative plays a crucial role in his paintings; the surrealist aspect emerges from the way he constructs a non-linear story. Scenes overlap, appear in different phases across various sections of each painting, and invite the viewer’s eye to roam through the composition. His work contains references to classical painting and cinema, making its interpretation dependent on the viewer's personal background and emotional state. The central thread of his art conveys that, despite life’s hardships, we all continue to celebrate in some way.

The Lighthouse at the End of the Ocean. 2024. Mixed media. 190 x 140 cm.

What role does experimentation play in your creative process?

Experimentation plays a fundamental role in my entire creative process on two levels: technical and narrative. On a technical level, because I allow myself a range of liberties or aesthetic whims that turn the act of painting itself into a game—something enjoyable where, in a way, anything is possible. On a narrative level, it’s about how I build stories, as there is no script or main idea holding everything together. Instead, starting from a series of seemingly disconnected scenes, I try to construct a story that intertwines, compelling the viewer, in some sense, to contribute their own interpretation or create their own narrative.

What are your references?

My influences range from classical painting, such as The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch or The Ghent Altarpiece, to more contemporary artists like Hurvin Anderson and Dominique Fung, including Hopper, Hockney, and Leonora Carrington, among countless others. All these artistic influences blend with others from cinema, including the films of Parajanov and the director of Midsommar. Particularly, Midsommar has been quite influential in my work for its distinctive aesthetic. Additionally, the world of comics plays a role, particularly the work of Moebius, especially his more surrealist science fiction illustrations. Video games are another source of inspiration, especially in how scenes are depicted—everything is flattened, as if it were a screen or the backdrop of a theater stage, reminiscent of mid-to-late-90s graphic adventure games.

A Brief Story of an Embrace. 2024. Oil, spray paint, colored pencils, and oil pastels. 33 x 41 cm.

How do you create the distinct—and sometimes recurring—characters in your paintings?

The characters develop as the body of work evolves, as if each painting were part of a larger story yet to be told. As I began working in this style, I noticed that many of them reappeared, and when I reused them or made them part of new pieces, I was already considering what I had previously painted about them, as well as what had happened to them in other works. For example, Death has transformed from being a skeleton that might seem to bring bad news into a somewhat mocking or humorous figure wearing a party hat. We also find the Devil, the Magician, and the Red House, which serves as a refuge or a pilgrimage site where characters often end up—or could end up. Then there’s the Black Cat, which initially appeared simply as a warning symbol, as if telling the other characters to stay alert to what’s happening around them, but later became a kind of measure of time: in larger pieces, it typically appears three times. I enjoy playing with the ambiguity of whether it’s three different cats or the same cat appearing at three different points in the story. In this way, the characters help weave a narrative and create connections between all the pieces, forming a shared universe to which they all belong.

The Crow, the Stag, the Grapes, and the Wine I Spilled. 2024. Oil, spray paint, colored pencils, and oil pastels. 60 x 74 cm.

When did you transition to the garden series, and why?

In 2022, I decided to gather all the surreal scenes and sketches that were scattered around my studio and explore what would happen if they coexisted in the same space—what would happen if all these seemingly disconnected elements were placed on the same plane. In this case, the plane is the canvas, and the setting is the garden. It’s here that the garden, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and all the imagery rooted in our collective unconscious become visible. From that point, I chose to keep pulling the thread of this story to see where it would lead me. This is when all the characters begin to emerge, allowing me to create a space where I can play and find creative freedom that I hadn’t experienced in my previous work.

You Should Break My Heart in January 2024. Oil, spray paint, and colored pencils on canvas. 81 x 100 cm.

What connection does this phase of your work have with your past in the world of comics?

This phase of my work draws a lot from all the years I spent reading comics, from when I was a young child to trying to break into the American comic industry. I was close, so close, but it didn’t materialize. The truth is that, in the end, what interested me more than the drawing itself were the more experimental narratives, like those of John Hankiewicz, Dave McKean, or people of that kind. In that sense, I’m mainly influenced by the way stories are constructed. They are not sequential panels where A leads to B, and B leads to C. Rather, the visual journey through the pieces is like a comic page where you can jump from the first panel to the seventh and then return to the second, and depending on the order you choose, the story will unfold in one way or another. It’s true that, for example, what you often find are different fragments of the same scene: a beginning, a middle, a climax, and a resolution, but they are often surrounded by other scenes that either influence the events in each smaller scene or simply coexist in the same universe. In that sense, I’m also very interested in the idea of a shared universe, right? That all these pieces, this entire body of work, form part of a larger story that seems to want to tell itself, one that still doesn’t know where it’s going but is starting to find its place and path. Like the characters that started simply appearing and now each one has its own backstory.

The circle as critical device and the marker as contemporary catalyst

POSCA, the Japanese brand of water-based paint markers, has established itself since the 1980s as a central instrument within contemporary artistic practices associated with urban art, illustration, graphic design, and interdisciplinary experimentation. Its opaque, highly pigmented, fast-drying formula—compatible with surfaces as diverse as paper, wood, metal, glass, and textiles—has enabled a technical expansion that extends beyond the traditional studio, engaging public space, objects, and installation practices alike.

In this context, POSCA operates as more than a working tool; it functions as a material infrastructure for contemporary creation. It is a technical device that enables immediacy of gesture without sacrificing chromatic density or formal precision. Its versatility has contributed to the democratization of languages historically associated with painting, fostering a more horizontal circulation between professional and amateur practices.

This expanded dimension of the medium finds a particularly compelling conceptual framework in The Rolling Collection, a traveling exhibition curated by ADDA Gallery. The project proposes a collective investigation of the circular format, understood not merely as a formal container but as a symbolic structure and a field of spatial tension.

Historically, the circle has operated as a figure of totality, continuity, and return. Within the framework of The Rolling Collection, the circular format shifts away from its classical symbolic charge toward an experimental dimension, becoming a support that challenges the hegemonic rectangular frontality of the Western pictorial tradition. The absence of angles demands a reconsideration of composition, balance, and directional flow.

Rather than functioning as a simple formal constraint, this condition generates a specific economy of visual decisions. The curved edge intensifies the relationship between center and periphery, dissolves internal hierarchies, and activates both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics. The resulting body of work interrogates the very processes through which images are constructed.

Following its 2025 tour through Barcelona, Ibiza, Paris, London, and Tokyo, a selection of the exhibition is presented at Art Madrid, reinforcing its international scope and its adaptability to diverse cultural contexts. The proposal for Art Madrid’26 brings together artists whose practices unfold at the intersection of urban art, contemporary illustration, and hybrid methodologies: Honet, Yu Maeda, Nicolas Villamizar, Fafi, Yoshi, and Cachetejack.

While their visual languages vary—ranging from graphic and narrative approaches to chromatic explorations charged with gestural intensity—the curatorial framework establishes a shared axis: a free, experimental, and distinctly color-driven attitude. In this sense, color functions as a conceptual structure that articulates the works while simultaneously connecting them to the specific materiality of POSCA.

The marker’s inherent chromatic vibrancy engages in dialogue with the formal assertiveness of the circle, generating surfaces in which saturation and contrast take center stage. The tool thus becomes embedded within the exhibition discourse, operating as a coherent extension of the participating artists’ aesthetic vocabularies.

One of the project’s most significant dimensions is the active incorporation of the public. Within the exhibition space—activated by POSCA during Art Madrid’26—visitors will be invited to intervene on circular supports installed on the wall using POSCA markers, thereby symbolically integrating themselves into The Rolling Collection during its presentation in Madrid.

This strategy introduces a relational dimension that destabilizes the notion of the closed artwork. Authorship becomes decentralized, and the exhibition space transforms into a dynamic surface for the accumulation of gestures. From a theoretical standpoint, the project may be understood as aligning with participatory practices that, without compromising formal coherence, open the artistic dispositif to contingency and multiplicity.

The selection of POSCA as the instrument for this collective intervention is deliberate. Its ease of use, line control, and compatibility with multiple surfaces ensure an accessible experience without diminishing the visual potency of the outcome. In this way, the marker operates as a mediator between professional practice and spontaneous experimentation, dissolving technical hierarchies.

The title itself, The Rolling Collection, suggests a collection in motion—unfixed to a single space or definitive configuration. Its itinerant nature, combined with the incorporation of local interventions, transforms the project into an organism in continuous evolution. Within this framework, POSCA positions itself as a material catalyst for a transnational creative community. Long associated with urban scenes and emerging practices, the brand reinforces its identity as an ally of open, experimental, and collaborative processes.

POSCA x The Rolling Collection should not be understood merely as a collaboration between a company and a curatorial initiative; rather, it constitutes a strategic convergence of tool, discourse, and community. The project proposes a reflection on format, the global circulation of contemporary art, and the expansion of authorship, while POSCA provides the technical infrastructure that makes both individual works and collective experience possible.