Guide through The Nothingness 2008

Dragan Ilić Di Vogo made this painting, "Guide Through The Nothingness" with what looks like acrylic on canvas, and it’s a wild ride of figuration and abstraction all mixed up together. I can almost feel Di Vogo wrestling with the figures, scraping away and building up layers to get the right tension and the push-pull of the composition. There’s this disembodied hand with red fingernails reaching for a reclining figure. It looks like it's made of stone, a classical reference maybe, but the hand seems menacing, a bit nightmarish. And then there’s a face floating in the background that appears to be staring right through you. The fluidity of the paint gives it this dreamlike quality as if it is a figment of the imagination. It makes me think about Francis Bacon and how he would use the figure to express inner turmoil. This painting has the same kind of psychological intensity. Di Vogo dives deep into the history of painting, pulling out fragments and rearranging them into something new, fresh, and unsettling. That’s what painting is all about – we steal from each other!