Alex Belardo Kostiw’s publishing practice, drawing closer to parts and possibilities of everyday reality. It spans
artist’s books and zines, and spatial books, which transform a book into a site.
Rooted in visual communication and print, these works deal in poetic, adapted, and iterative elements, visual structures of comics, and conceptually driven forms.
︎info
Hibernus
10 pages, one sheet folded, risograph, 4.25 x 2.75 inches
This comic began during a phone call with my cousin, when I doodled a bear’s face in my notebook. My cousin thought it was strange, the bear’s floating head, but I figured it was dreaming.
I opened one of its eyes. The bear started remembering its body. My cousin said it looked very cozy. I erased and redrew it standing in front of a panel, which might have been its dream or waking reality. The bear moved toward the full-flowing stream. Still sleepy, my cousin surmised.
The one-sheet format offers a vast snow-white space and kept me from making the quiet sequence needlessly elaborate.
This comic began during a phone call with my cousin, when I doodled a bear’s face in my notebook. My cousin thought it was strange, the bear’s floating head, but I figured it was dreaming.
I opened one of its eyes. The bear started remembering its body. My cousin said it looked very cozy. I erased and redrew it standing in front of a panel, which might have been its dream or waking reality. The bear moved toward the full-flowing stream. Still sleepy, my cousin surmised.
The one-sheet format offers a vast snow-white space and kept me from making the quiet sequence needlessly elaborate.
books
are
︎ Alex Belardo Kostiw
Alex Belardo Kostiw brings together poetic elements, visual structures of comics, and conceptually driven forms in their artist’s zines, books, and spatial books, works that explode and transform aspects of the book into a site. Rooted in firsthand observation, multifaceted research, and an iterative approach, Alex frames familiar moments in reality as worthy of wonder. Brief and tender, quiet and dense, their work invites the reader to slow down and read closely. Reading becomes multimodal and intuitive, while the story itself resists complete unravelling. Throughout their practice, Alex centers the human impulse to seek, expand, and transform how we connect with the everyday, others, and ourselves through storytelling.
Alex has exhibited at numerous comics festivals and art book fairs internationally. Their work is in such collections as the Joan Flasch Artist’s Book Collection, MassArt Zine and Comics Collection, MICA Decker Library, Pratt Institute Artist’s Books Collection, RISD Artist’s Books Collection, Tufts SMFA Library, and Yale University Haas Arts Library Special Collections, among others. They have led workshops and given talks on print- and zine-making at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago; Wende Museum, Culver City; Suffolk University, Boston; and several community art spaces.
Alex is an Assistant Professor of Visual Communication Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They also teach risography at Spudnik Press and design publications for art and culture institutions. They live with many reams of paper and two cats.
contact
︎now / future
Slight Fictions, solo exhibition at De Pree Art Center, Hope College, Holland, MI.past
Comics, Zine, and Art Book Fairs
MICE, Boston; Pittsburgh Art Book Fair; Detroit Art Book Fair; Pretty Good Fest;
TCAF, Toronto;
Seattle Art Book Fair;
Comic Arts Maine Portland;
Multiple Formats Art Book Fair, Boston;
Boston Art Book Fair; Chicago Art Book Fair; Independent Artist Book Fair, New York;
Jersey Art Book Fair, Jersey City, NJ;
LA Art Book Fair (virtual); Autoptic, Minneapolis; CAKE, Chicago; CALA, LA; CXC, Columbus, OH; DiNK, Denver;
SLICE, St. Louis;
Zineland Terrace, Toronto.Exhibitions (*solo/two-person) There between light and shadow, Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago*; Pakiramdam, Co-Prosperity, Chicago*; I’m calling from a great distance, The Annex at Spudnik Press, Chicago*; Kitchen Table Stories, Evanston Art Center, Evanston; The Anthropology of Motherhood, Carlow University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh; The Velocity of a Page, Tephra ICA, Tephra, VA; Art of the Risograph, Chicago Design Museum.
Residencies MASS MoCCA (2027); Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Residency (2023–24); In Cahoots Residency (2022); Spudnik Press Artist Residency (2016–17).