Bazil Duliskovich – Selected Works @ David Kovats (June 2021)

Bazil Duliskovich (b. 1969)
Bazil has experimented with video art, collage and sculpture, but his principal means of expression is painting, a medium through which he challenges the Soviet art education he encountered growing up on the Ukrainian side of the border with Hungary. Another source of Bazil’s defiance is the ill-defined and stereotyping labels often applied to his work. Characterisations such as ‘Eastern European’, ‘Slavic’ or ‘post-Soviet art’ are a source of frustration to the artist, who grew up speaking multiple languages in a region endowed with numerous cultures and identities. These tightly composed and complex works are, in their draughtsmanship, a product of the formal training Bazil received. Yet there is a conscious departure from the Old Master and Socialist realism of the academy, even if stylistic traces remain. At first glance his figures can appear realistic — even photorealistic — but soon dissolve into a dream-like, cinematic visual world.

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