Ivan Bazak

In our current exhibition we show paintings by the young Ukrainian artist Ivan Bazak, born 1980 in Kolomyia. This student of the Düsseldorfer Academy of Fine Art presents his works, gestural abstracted landscapes, for the first time in a single exhibition in Germany.

The landscapes of Bazak are deserted for the most part und remain in a grey, almost melancholic tonality. They lead the beholder's view into vast endless plains. Often rivers meander through the wide open spaces. Nothing limits the wideness, there are no obstacles, the beholder's view is directed continuously to the depth of the horizon. The horizontal direction of the view is only rarely interrupted by single blades of grass, trees and mountains. Only from far, a benchmark might appear but in the powerful fluency of the surrounding paint it instantly dissolves. The visibly fast stroke of the brush and hence the abstraction give the paintings a special kind of dynamic in which the grey-brownish, sometimes black vibrates, its gloom is abandoned and the agitated scenery is calmed down.

Bazak's paintings could have come into being in the plains of the river Rhine or as well in the Ukrainian wideness. They definetely do not show a place which could be found on a map. The works arouse from the artist's power of imagination without claiming a simulation of a real situation even when the influence of the artist's memories of anything seen cannot be excluded.

On several very big landscapes Bazak does not make use of frames for his works painted in acryl on nettle. The paintings are presented directly on the wall of the exhibition room. These works of the trained stage painter remind the viewer of theatre settings and create a moodful effect quite instantaneously. They fill the room and bestow the visitor with a background which is melancholic but stirring at the same time.

In small intimate portraits Ivan Bazak shows himself and figures from his personal surrounding as for example his grandfather but also figures made up in his phantasy. Their faces are rather shadowy due to Bazaks sketchy style of drawing. But still the figures are precisely characterised by their clothes and their postures.

Pressetext

Ivan Bazak
Landscape