Symbiosis 2018

Dragan Ilić Di Vogo made this painting, Symbiosis, with oil on canvas and a real commitment to color! The painting feels like a process of layering, like the artist built up the image in stages, allowing each layer to inform the next. The texture is smooth, and the colors blend into each other, creating this dreamy, ethereal effect. The mermaid form is kind of strange, and surreal, existing in a world of underwater creatures, and splotches of color. Look at the way the tail melds into the shape of the sting ray, that area suggests this whole other world of strange hybrids and unlikely pairings. There is a fluidity to the piece that reminds me of Remedios Varo, another artist who played with the boundaries between human, animal, and machine. The painting feels like an invitation to imagine and to question, as if the artist is saying: let's not limit ourselves to what we already know.