Aleksandr Vladimirovich Nuss (b. Saratov, Russia, 1999) is a visual artist who has been based in Italy since 2001. He lives in the province of Modena and works between Modena and Bologna. 

From 2018 to 2023, he trained first in Sculpture and later in Painting – Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Since 2022, his work has engaged in a close and ongoing dialogue with images in their pure form, extending beyond their physical supports—be they prints, catalogue pages, slides, reproductions, posters, or billboards. His practice is based on a careful examination of the given support, working directly with paper, sanding ink, and observing how different materials—through the use of sandpaper and abrasive sponges—respond to total erasure, partial disappearance, or lingering survival.

Exhibition view: Biblioteche. Costruire l'intelligenza veneziana | Libraries. Bildung Venice Intelligence, curated by Benno Albrecht, Roberto Beraldo, and Michele Casarin, within the Venice Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale Intelligence. Natural. Artificial. Collective, curated by Carlo Ratti, 10/05 - 23/11/2025.

Everytime each work is an adagio test the waters, feeling the surface like a dowser sensing the depths of the image beyond its surface, in search of something more elusive, more subterranean... perhaps more true.

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Nuss, 2025

A.V. Nuss, It's not right but it's no more body: a visual being, 2023, sandings on print on paper, 85x41, coll. City of Venice, MUVE Foundation, International Gallery of Modern Art Ca' Pesaro.

In the artwork It's not right but it's no more body: a visual being (2023), the artist erases the original reproduction of Saint George and the dragon by Dosso Dossi*, exhibited in the halls of the Pinacoteca of Ferrara. The saint is removed, the remains of the dragon are piled together, yet the original action is preserved: the act of wounding, the act of assault, and also the act of falling.
It creates a diagonal that draws attention to the idea of a weight, of a descent. This diagonal signals the presence of an essence, almost a ghost, a vaporous being linked to the insubstantial act of remembering. This gesture carries a dual movement: not only that of falling, but also of rising and targeting. One side of this arrow implies an entry — into the body of the dragon, and into the body of the image itself, by both the artist and the viewer; the other side of the arrow suggests the starting point of observation, encouraging the gaze to expand itself across the object being viewed.

*It refers to one of the lower side panels (on the right) of the Costabili Polyptych (1513–1527) by Garofalo and Dosso Dossi.

A.V. Nuss, Untitled, 2023, sandings on poster, 102x94cm, installation view at Fortezza del Priamar, Savona

Sanding is a very particular act compared to any other painterly gesture, because it demands greater effort—it engages with the raw, physical friction of the material directly, without mediators or facilitators, and its irreversibility cannot be concealed. In the act of sanding, there is a heightened bodily closeness unlike any other artistic action. One is hunched over, kneeling, almost prostrate before the material. The moment of abrasion becomes a kind of ritual—a silent prayer—as the surface is erased in anticipation of the image's emergence, the true essence of the chosen material being revealed.

And so it may happen that the material, through its form and colour, becomes a mirror: it may be that we wait not only for the image to appear, but for ourselves to surface—to be born from the material in our truest essence.

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Nuss, 2022

A.V. Nuss, La luce che splende nelle parole, 2022/2023, installation view