Pigmalion A 2019

Curator: Dragan Ilić Di Vogo's "Pigmalion A," created in 2019 with oil paint, presents quite the otherworldly tableau. Editor: Oh, I get a distinct sense of serenity, almost melancholic, despite the rather busy composition. There's a softness to the light that makes you want to pause. Curator: Indeed. The artist employs the medium of oil paint with skill. It's fascinating how Di Vogo uses it to depict both the fleshy, tattooed human form and these nebulous, almost planetary orbs hovering in the background. Look at the base upon which the subject sits – a collision of paint and organic forms topped with the strange juxtaposition of a painted checkerboard cube. How does that material relationship strike you? Editor: Intriguing! It is a bit… disconcerting, perhaps intentionally so. She sits perched on what seems like a bizarre, chaotic bloom, yet remains poised. The checkerboard cube does feel almost rudely placed – such a calculated form against the explosion of colour. It adds to the surreal tension, almost as if it's a game piece, poised for a move we can't quite see. Curator: One could certainly interpret the cube as a symbolic element disrupting the more fluid forms. The process by which the image is made mirrors the theme of creation present in the myth of Pygmalion – are we witnessing a figure sculpted or formed into being? Note the tension between the nude figure and the patterned markings upon their skin; what commentary do they provide about social attitudes to modification? Editor: Possibly! Thinking about that, the rose also strikes me as deliberate. Is it beauty? Self-love? A borrowed emotion? Perhaps it speaks to that act of giving life through art – breathing scent, if not breath, into a sculpted ideal. I do feel drawn into the world she seems to inhabit. Curator: Absolutely. I find it particularly potent that the materials themselves invite discourse of labour, identity, and creation. This prompts us to look closer, to really grapple with our role as consumers and interpreters of art. Editor: It leaves you with a lot to ponder about art's role, and our role, in shaping beauty, reality, or whatever it is that’s blooming under her.