The painter, graphic artist and photographer Alexander Vasilyevich Ahanov was born in Frolovo in 1957. In 1980, he graduated from the Krasnoselsky College of Metalwork. From that moment on he began participating in exhibitions.

Ahanov noted:

A trained jeweler, he did not want to limit himself to this profession. His eagerness to try new things prompted him to express himself in various artforms: painting, graphics, photography, furniture and interior design, installations, and art objects.

Alexander Ahanov developed his own style. His works are always unusual, surprising, original and recognizable. The artist lives and breathes experiments. His use of various materials and methods, visual techniques, and non-standard solutions invariably attract the viewer’s attention.

The art object “The Story of Aphrodite She Told Herself” looks like a sculpture that seems to have turned into a manuscript. The bas-relief of the classical image of Aphrodite was placed by the artist in a box with one glass wall and four mirror ones.

Aphrodite’s head and the wall to which Alexander Ahanov attached it are completely covered with text, the lines of which go along the relief of the face. The Greek text is not just decorative but tells a cohesive story.

The black-and-white face is reflected in several mirrors at once, thus creating an impression of added space and endlessness of Aphrodite’s story. In this work, classical antique sculpture is transformed into a handwritten book and invites the viewer to develop a new way of perception that would bridge the gap between old traditional art and innovative boundary-breaking modern approaches to creating images.