Ludens 2019

Dragan Ilić Di Vogo painted this horse, ‘Ludens’ sometime in the recent past, and what strikes me is the playful colour palette and the smoothness of surface. I can imagine the artist carefully applying thin glazes of paint, adding layer upon layer to create that dreamy, soft-focus effect. I like that the horse is almost overtaken by a kind of cosmic bubble bath, floating in a space between realism and surrealism. What does it mean to paint a horse like this, embellishing it with floating orbs and checkerboard cubes? It makes me think about fantasy, and how painting allows us to morph and reimagine the real world. It’s as if Di Vogo wants to add another layer of meaning to his subject. Like other figurative painters, Di Vogo uses painting as a site of inquiry, asking questions about how we see, think, and experience the world. And that, for me, is where the real magic happens.