Inny

Oleg Sydor-Gibelinda

The main source behind Petro Bevza’a galleries in 2016-18 is his latest series of paintings titled “Another One” (‘Inny’, Ukrainian). In Old Ukrainian (Grinchenko, a Ukrainian writer and educator, used the word in the context of cognition: “when not in accord with your mind, do not attempt the other”), and also in Polish, and to some extend in Czech, ‘inny’ has the same meaning: different, not like the ones before. The implication being, the works in front of you are new, fresh, and not like what has come before. As one can see, that is indeed the case. However, of the two dozen works completed, the viewer is presented here with barely a third. Yet even this is enough to convey the eloquence and vibrancy of this series.

Hence today we meet with an “other Bevza”. No doubt, however, this new Bevza is still very familiar. The difference is that he is enriched with new subtleties, moreover – with new intentions. In this sense the departure from figurative art in some of the earlier series is not really so. Always perceptive to the opportunities of abstract painting, especially of the color-emotion dynamic, the artist has never hesitated to draw from the vast arsenal of abstractive possibilities laid out in his preceding work – a body of work that only seemingly opposes the figurative direction in art. We see the same thing happening here – yet, the narrative and theme aspects have been cut down to the bare minimum.

  For instance, strange titles like “The Angel and the Camouflage Net” or “The Journey of the Yellow Flamingo Across the Budjak Lagoon” will keep you guessing, as they find only passing reflection in the paintings themselves. However, these names are not arbitrary: the subject matter of “Another One” maintains a certain narrative drive – it simply does not follow the established syntactic rules of articulation. At times a work was spawned in collaboration with close colleagues who were able to put a timely “break” on the irresistible artistic current, whereas the artist would use the later as the substance for outlining his vision. In other cases, you can easily observe the influence of the flower series from the 00’s, but this time the exotic Amaryllis would better serve as the point of departure.

No less significant is the overtone of elated unpredictability. The atypical proportions beget new emotions, previously unaddressed by the artist. The thread of impressions unwinds like a ball of yarn – distantly alluding to “A Study In Scarlet”, Petro Bevza, in the style of David Salle, unravels the artistic narrative atop an equally expressive background. In so doing, the symbolic charge of the latter is magnified several times over, but the compulsion to recognize the movement of the story never resolves. The impervious quality of the forms is as if breached in several places. Only when up and close does it become apparent that the painted scene barely binds its elements together.

The same can be said of the variety of works presented: from small – miniature almost – to full scale, taking up half the wall; from the traditional square to narrow rectangles. However, they are all united by a malleable view of reality, by a clever reassignment of emphasis on certain color groups (for instance, how different and unlike what we’ve seen before is the hotter, more intricate yellow; not without its own merit is also the vibrant raspberry-pink), by a common artistic technique, whereby a bold, nearly aggressive contour harmoniously blends in with the romantic, pulsating body of the brushstroke (in which is dissolves), and a creative outline that merges with a hazy cloud gleaming mysteriously over the surface of the painting… The blurring of boundaries – both literally and figuratively – is a sign of stylistic tolerance befitting an artist who has already found his artistic voice, as well as a sign of not being attached to any one style.

Never before has Bevza’s worldview been so unconstrained – hence our interpretations here are in no way definite and are merely explorations of the possibilities of description. Neither the narrative thread familiar to us from “Theodosics”, nor any Baroque associations – recall his recent and truly brilliant series “Jordan”, nor the phantom of a storyline wandering in the thorns of “Presence” will be of any use to the viewer here. One is not even able to fully dissolve in the play of pure forms, since there is a second level of depth involved, and the “formal method” is sustained by a “third meaning” (Barthes), or if you may – by a “surplus value” (Marx). Both can be attributed to a so called saturation of the semantic network – a common thread in this series. What we see on the canvas is as if the result of several filters of the author’s perception and subsequent reflection, so it’s no coincidence that in some cases the total number of painted layers is over a hundred: the constructive meaning finds a corollary in the forms from the outset (ensuing work on “Other” consisted more in the “cutting away of the unessential” instead of in the wasteful “expansion of essences”).

At the same time, these “palimpsets” emanate with a natural freshness and lightness as if they were painted in one sitting. Nevertheless, some of these works took two or three months to complete… and at the same time the artist was able to avoid any sense of affectedness, tedium, or bias. The optimistic straightforwardness manifested in the works is akin to Leontiev’s “flowering complexity” (the first metaphor should be given more attention, as the second one might be a bit disconcerting). The carnival-like festivity, characteristic of most of the paintings, does not exclude nuances of light alarm or bewilderment. “To paint with sonority and clarity” was one of Petro Bevza’s goals from the onset.

But before us is not merely a hymn to life – at least not only a hymn. You can also hear the quiet melancholy of a nocturne and the melody of a sonata – achieved by means of a refined artistry that “borrows” from the most independent of art forms its capacity for nameless and, at the same time, very emotional storytelling. The beginning and end of these stories we were not destined to know, for that is the nature of the visual. “The Plasticity of Time” (the title of one of the works) is expressed instantaneously and straightforwardly, and yet without forgoing its ability to affect the non-indifferent viewer.