Katarina 2012

‘Katarina’ by Dragan Ilić Di Vogo is like a dream dipped in surreal colors. The artist is taking cues from art history, while making something entirely new. Look at the way this painter’s hand has conjured this young woman with her penetrating gaze. The textures are creamy, almost like icing, especially in the impasto swirls that surround her head and cascade down her neck. The overall effect is one of a strange, hyper-real world, where bodies and objects are not quite stable. The light is eerie and unsettling. I imagine Di Vogo building up layers, scraping back, and then building up again, finding form through color. It reminds me of other surrealist painters, who were also concerned with the fluidity of form and the power of the subconscious. When you make something new, you are always in conversation with art history, even when you are breaking away from it. Di Vogo is definitely in dialogue with art history.