Alex Belardo Kostiw’s publishing practice.
Rooted in visual communication design, these works deal in poetic, adapted, and iterative elements, visual structures of comics, and conceptually driven forms. They span artist’s zines and spatial books, which turn a book into a site. ︎info
Inventory :: Recollection
Saddle-stitch binding in hard case, accordion fold, laserjet, unique
This two-part artist’s book documents a man’s life through his possessions. A folded list provides brief descriptions of items in his home and their history. A single-signature pamphlet shows unlabeled rubbings.
Collapsing the volume and values of objects, the book interrogates the significance of legacy and the marks a life makes on things, places, and people.
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 transform the elements of a book into a site. Rooted in firsthand observation, multifaceted research, and an iterative approach, Alex frames familiar moments in reality as worth attention. 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 connections 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 design for art and culture institutions and teach risography at Spudnik Press, a community printmaking studio. 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.Multiple Formats Art Book Fair, Boton, MA.
Miami Zine Fair, Miami, FL.
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).