Copperas 2008

Vasiliy Ryabchenko's large scale painting "Copperas" invites us into a dreamscape filled with bold colors and enigmatic forms. You can almost feel the artist building up the image, layer by layer, pushing and pulling at the paint until these hazy figures emerge. I can imagine Ryabchenko wrestling with the canvas, making a series of intuitive decisions, adding and subtracting until the painting feels "right". What’s really interesting is the way the blue dominates the space— it makes the canvas glow. And this skull motif right at the bottom gives it this surreal edge! Looking at this painting, I feel a connection to other artists like Ernst, Magritte, maybe even de Chirico— they are all in conversation about how to represent the weirdness of the subconscious mind, and how to make space for a multitude of interpretations in art.