Mikola Bilous
BORN 1956
Mykola Bilous, born 1956, invented a new method of harmonising colours through inversion. The inversion – the change of colours – is regulated by certain rules. The first one is using basic tone (a mix of three primary colours – red, blue, and yellow), the second one is putting a thin layer of other colours, between the primary and auxiliary, which are opposite. These rules were developed by theorists of the Bauhaus school, especially Kandinsky.
Bilous puts down a basic tone, shadow, and colours, light. The black colour is fully excluded from the basic composition giving a background to figures that are brightly illuminated, as if at night. The work resembles a theatrical scene, where the background is darkened and the ‘plot’ of the artwork is secondary to the colour solution.
In the perception of the artist, the combination of relief and poster-like aesthetics – the sculptural and optical – gives the artwork both flat and volumetric qualities. This formal solution is original and offers a different semantic line vs the ‘plot’ line of the artwork as such. The range and arrangement of colours are of key significance.
Mykola Bilous is a film enthusiast and his art is reminiscent of film frames. He quotes a fondness for ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ by Milan Kundera, ‘Dogville’ by Lars von Trier. These links to film are widespread, the Grand Prix winning-film in Cannes in 1999, ‘My name is Rosetta’, featured a poster with a design by Bilous and a documentary film about the artist, ‘Kolunya’ was released recently in his native Ukraine.
Bilous himself believes that his work is closest to that of Delacroix and Matisse whom, in his opinion, gave colour a role equal to that of figure painting and structure but early Kandinsky also is prevalent.
Mykola Bilous studied at the Kharkov Art School, the Crimean College of Painting and the Kharkov Art-Industrial Institute in the Faculty of Painting and Posters.
Kommersant Ukraine wrote, “Mykola Bilous takes apart the original screenshot to the extent when figurative painting is practically reduced to abstract and achieves the optical effect of a photographic negative. The image fluctuates between the realistic and the illusory causing a sensation of slight unease in the viewer”.
