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Throughout the history of art, the macabre and the grotesque have been painted and sculptured frequently to depict the atrocities of mankind, the battlefield horrors of war, revolution and civil unrest. It can be said that artists are the chroniclers of history. Francisco Goya, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp and the Dada art movement constantly produced works of art that redefined the grotesque and the unusual. Grotesque does not necessarily mean gross.

Alexander Hoda continues to push the boundaries of the grotesque but prefers his sculpture to be called unusual; he does not perceive his work to be grotesque.

‘I don’t want my work to be seen as vulgar or offensive, but I don’t think any art should be viewed in terms of its beauty either. It should be viewed and judged for its content and on its merit. A lot of art that depicts violence or war takes itself too seriously and misses the point. How often do people laugh at things they don’t understand or are scared of? Black comedy can be horrific; it doesn’t always have to be just funny.’

He is interested in the human psyche, and the forces that influence behaviour; how we look at deformity, violence, ugliness and aggression and the preoccupation of society that constantly perves at the freak show on TV or on the street.

‘Society is obsessed with things that are not normal; there is a grim fascination for tragedy, people stop and geek at a car crash on a freeway, hoping to see the victims, but at the same time they also want to keep some distance between themselves and the tragedy.’

Hoda explores the elements of confrontation and mild aggression in his sculpture; both are basic survival mechanisms used by most animals. He doesn’t want his work to necessarily metamorphosizeinto something that’s not attractive or pleasing to the eye; but he does want to push the boundaries of his sculptures to the extreme, so that people will have to confront the objects.

‘I’m drawn more to the imagery of the car crash, for me it has equal merit and is just as stylish and beautiful.’ Hoda remembers when he was very young, being taken by his father to St Thomas’ Hospital in London to see Joseph Merrick, cruelly dubbed the Elephant Man. ‘He was standing in a big glass box behind the students while they had their exams. There was a preoccupation with seeing this very grotesque being, but there was also a great sense of sympathy and sadness.’

Several cultures have used the technique of high relief sculpture, most notably the Assyrians, Romans and the Babylonians. From the 6th century BC, this form of sculpture also became very important in Greek art.

Relief sculpture, depicting myths, legends and scenes of every day life were used as popular decoration in their palaces and classical temples like the Parthenon. Hoda also experiments with this technique. There is a strong narrative contained within the three intense red wall reliefs; they represent the divine aspects of sexuality. The sequence of sculptures explores the birth, development and the transformation of shifting identities. Springboard, begins with simple understated objects floating in surreal space; he lifts the intensity of Tonguetwister which focuses on fetish mayhem. And the final piece in his sculptural trilogy, Gutwrench, develops into a perverted apocalyptic wonderland of fluid sexual aggression. For me, these works are seductive and deeply erotic; they remind me of the sensuous sculptures that adorn the Khajuraho Temples in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Hoda very often uses the bear, dog, and pig as motifs.

‘There is once again a preoccupation with society and these animals; especially when they are young and very cuddly, cute and kind. Most people had their own teddy bear when they were a child and played with a puppy or visited farm animals. However, when these animals grow up they can become wild creatures and that kind of contradiction is something that fascinates me and is something I want to explore. Also the shape of these animals is interesting; humans have an innate sympathy with them.’

Most humans, have an emotional attachment to new born creatures, however, he says, ‘there is still something basically horrific about them.’ Hoda wants the sculpture Pushover to look like a large child’s toy, with these erratic but interesting sort of babies playing around on top of the plinth, in fact, trying to push and topple the work over. He says:

‘I want the piece to feel innocent and young but have a sinister edge to it. There is sexual content in this piece, it’s expressing human desires.’

The work represents a quick escape, the creatures have mated, sniffed and suckled and now they’re on the run. Meltdown is carved like a stone-mason would; there is a contrast between the sharp and the geometric classical lines. The work shows the destruction of the creatures living quarters caused by a population explosion. Too many now live within the confinement of their home. With nowhere to go, they fight for their existence and desperately try to disguise themselves and hide. All of his work explores the physical and emotional intimacy of relationships and challenges the viewer to question their own understanding of love, sex, death and their need to belong.

Hoda was brought up on Classicism and Neo-Classical sculptures. As a child he was frog marched around the British and the Victoria and Albert Museums. He quickly became interested in what was good art, figuration became important, and he always felt that there was more attention and importance given to that era. He always enjoyed figuration but thought it was a bit naff as well:

‘I had a love hate relationship with the (perfect) figure; I wanted to use it but also wanted to distort it as far as I could.’

His materials and paraphernalia are sourced from amusement parks, sex shops, Halloween shops, and from do it-yourself stores, they are pre-made sculptures that he recycles to create a new dialogue.

‘They are more than jokes, more than things that just get used once and then discarded. I’m always interested in the idea of recycling an object, and the imagery; I like to recycle classic images.’

All of his sculptures are finished in his signature materials, polystyrene, latex, resin, rubber and found objects.

Hoda always wanted to become an artist; he found reading quite difficult but was always interested in pictures and their visual image.

‘I was much more interested in those things than anything else. I studied fine art history, there was a lot of theory which you had to simulate and learn about.’

Going back to the studio, he found the whole process of absorbing the theory and actually working in the studio extremely difficult. He found he was making art about theory and that’s certainly not what he wanted to do, it really inhibited him. He then studied at the London Royal Academy completing a Master of Art. ‘The Academy still had all the original plaster casts of all the great classical images, most of the other important art schools had thrown the castings out years ago, they didn’t want that stuff any more, they considered it old fashioned.’ Observing these castings forced him to make and create images of his own and to forget about theory for a while. It was a major turning point in his career and a catalyst that helped him enormously. He liked the conflict that developed between his work and the classical detritus he was surrounded by.

‘You can get seduced by the whole tame procedure of the teaching system, but it’s the artists who fight against the flow that tend to become important.’

Alexander Hoda studied at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London, graduating in 2000. He subsequently studied at Goldsmiths College and the Royal Academy Schools. His previous exhibitions include: FEAR at Allsopp Contemporary and Wendal Fine Art, London; Anticipation at Selfridges, London; The Future can Wait at the Truman Brewery, London; Who’s on Second at the Pumphouse Gallery, London; and Alexander Hoda New Sculpture at University of Arts Gallery, London 2008. His work also features in the Saatchi Gallery’s Newspeak: British Art Now, 2009. He is now collected by some of the goliaths of the art world; including: art dealer and curator Henry Allsopp; The David Roberts Art Foundation, London; the Saatchi Collection, London; Larry Gagosian Private Collection, New York; the British art historian and Picasso biographer John Richardson, New York; And in the private collections of, Andrew Williams, Richard Greer and Mary Moore in Zurich. This is the first exhibition outside of the United Kingdom for this exceptional young artist.

-Essay By Ken McGregor 2009