Profile: Troy Khasiev

Recent global events have had a heavy toll on the artistic community, both local and international. As the world’s leading art market, New York is a special place for artists in many countries. The chance to exhibit in the city is a dream for many, and something that an artist can subsequently wear as a badge of honor and which is a huge boost to their career.

In March, Troy Khasiev, a young and up-and-coming artist from Moscow, finally realized his dream of making his North American debut, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Russian Art in Jersey City. The event was quite unusual, however, and not what everyone had expected.

On March 21, his art works were hung in the museum, and in connection with the emergency situation, the exhibition opened without a viewing. It moved from a real format to a virtual one, where in fact more people can see it. Here is a link to a video about the exhibition: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wqr4wKxGLzvpVZNp0HlUnVWaa_bUg3bz/view

And here’s a link that takes you to the museum’s website and where you can walk through the exhibition at your own pace: http://gallerymargo.com/our-artists-troy-khasiev/

While we don’t have that chance to see the very talented Troy and his art work in person, we at New York Artscape caught up with the artist and asked some questions about his life and art work.

At the age of 3, the toddler Troy began to make his first drawings; his first photographs came at age five. As a teenager, he started experimenting with digital imaging. Today, he studies and produces artworks in a range of mediums. Despite his young age, in 2015, at the age of 15, Troy showed a series of digital graphics in Venice, as part of an independent project during the Venice Art Biennale. He’s also had exhibitions in Paris and Moscow.

“While growing up I realized that I need to spend more time studying new techniques and other innovations,” said Troy in an exclusive interview. “Anyone can take pictures but an artist needs to work hard and think in order to bring something new to a public that’s overwhelmed by images, both photographic and video.”

Photography as a profession is not going anywhere. So, what’s an artist to do in order to photograph something in a unique manner, and to do it in a new way so that people will notice and appreciate you.

“Some complex digital technologies created by artists several years ago can be easily reproduced today with an app,” says Troy. “But it’s one thing to use the app, and the other is to come up with something yourself. Not everyone is capable of this.”

Troy’s art stresses a freedom of expression with innovative materials and techniques. He challenges our imaginations to invent new notions of what art is, with attention to the many-faceted notion of relationships between body, matter, time and space. 

“An artist creates something new and does it consciously – The artist develops his own language,” says Troy. “I have a desire to show people how interesting and unusual something can be that they pass by without noticing.”

Through his art, Troy exemplifies a peculiar sense of universality that defies the specificity of his national culture and the environment in which he was born. He is clearly well along his stated goal of wanting to create a universal language, but to achieve this he will have to further engaged in this language, going far beyond accepted cultural and physical distance to preserve originality.

“A lot of art has been done in such a way that they are guaranteed to sell well…. This is not art that carries a deeper meaning,” says Troy. “I try to see the world from an unusual angle, a non-standard view – because I want people to hang out less on their phones and pay more attention to what surrounds them.”