Alex Chorny: The Artist as Explorer and Inventor
Artist Talk with Alex Chorny at the John Mann Gallery August 10, 2023
To dedicate one’s life to art is to embrace exploration — to step into uncharted territory where discovery and failure walk hand in hand. For Burlington-based interdisciplinary artist Alex Chorny, this spirit of exploration is at the very core of his practice. His journey into art has been anything but linear, shaped by an academic background that stretches across Life Sciences, Accounting & Finance, and Studio Art. This unique blend of disciplines fuels his conviction that art is the great connector — a force that bridges worlds we often keep apart.
Exploration Beyond Tradition
Where many artists explore landscapes of memory or emotion, Chorny ventures into the unseen landscapes of science itself. By abandoning traditional art-making materials, he experiments with magnetism, gravity, and natural forces as his collaborators.
In doing so, he expands the definition of painting and sculpture, de-sanctifying long-held notions of what art must be. His work becomes a laboratory for discovery, where pigment, particles, and energy flows reveal patterns hidden from the naked eye.
The Seriousness of Play
At the heart of Chorny’s process is play — though in his case, play looks like invention. He tests how materials respond to the pull of magnetism, how forces shape symmetries and tessellations, how unseen energy structures might be made visible.
This curiosity-driven experimentation is playful in spirit, yet it is also rigorous, echoing the very processes of scientific research. Every artwork is the outcome of both chance and intention, a balance of control and surrender.
Inventing New Languages of Seeing
Chorny is not simply making images; he is inventing new visual languages. His pieces illuminate the threads that connect disciplines often kept separate: math and aesthetics, physics and emotion, intuition and analysis. Viewers are invited to see not just art, but the forces that govern life itself — the structures and flows that shape both our physical world and our inner imagination.
The Reality of the Artist’s Path
Like all explorers, Chorny’s journey is marked by both recognition and struggle. Emerging artists often work in the tension between innovation and visibility, between the passion to create and the challenge of being heard in a crowded world. Yet Chorny continues to push forward, sustained by his conviction that art’s role is to reveal connections and inspire new ways of thinking.
A Legacy of Curiosity and Connection
Collectors who encounter Alex Chorny’s work are not only acquiring visually striking pieces — they are participating in his broader legacy: a commitment to curiosity, to bridging disciplines, and to expanding our understanding of what art can be. His practice reminds us that artists are explorers and inventors, daring enough to reimagine the rules, and generous enough to share their discoveries with the rest of us.
In the end, Alex Chorny’s art is not just about objects on a wall, but about opening portals between worlds — between science and aesthetics, logic and wonder, the visible and the unseen.
