Ilya Brezinski
It’s Simple Unless You Look at the Canvas
Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by Ilya Brezinski whose hyperrealistic paintings prompt one to ponder the transience of time
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Deceptively simple scenes causing the viewer to question the evident
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Irony and absurdity as ways of dealing with the human vulnerability and vanity of being
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A versatile artist working across the media of painting, drawing, music, and tattoo art
Every artwork featured in this show is executed in the traditional oil on canvas technique and belongs to the genre of hyperrealism. These pictures pivot on illusion: resembling immaculate prints from a distance, on closer inspection they surprise the viewer, revealing brushstrokes and painted texture. In a time when anyone can be a photographer and digital images are subjected to endless manipulations, this approach, unexpectedly, reinstates the viewer’s trust in the traditional visual art media. Precisely by requiring hundreds of hours of manual work a painting confronts the instant digital image.
Ilya Brezinski is unrivalled when it comes to simple, yet surrealistic scenes. Here, whimsical imagery receives an impeccable hyperrealistic treatment. Hyperrealism is an art form exploring the ‘death of the moment’: painstakingly mimicking the present, it denies it the opportunity to become past. That is why the best examples of this genre, alongside admiration for the artist’s craftsmanship, invariably trigger a slight unease at the realisation of the transience of life, essentially a sequence of such ‘dying moments.’ In order to deal with the human dread and vulnerability in the face of the existential insight, Ilya Brezinski provides his artworks with the psychological defences of irony and absurdity.
Using such devices as geometric distortions or deformed outlines resembling reflections in petrol-stained water, the artist manages to grasp our attention. The mind stumbles, momentarily disrupting perception: initially recognising the object, the viewer proceeds to examine it, as if seeing it for the first time. The very process of capturing the viewer’s attention for prolonged periods of time becomes the substance of hyperrealistic art.
It was a curatorial choice to include in the exhibition works from different time periods, allowing one to trace the artist’s creative evolution. Nowadays Ilya is fascinated by the ‘before and after’ juxtapositions, revisiting the allegorical genre of vanitas (translating from the Latin as ‘vanity’) that has been around since the 16th century. Observant viewers will surely appreciate the allegory of vanity of being in the form of a broken tennis racquet.
Ilya Brezinski was born in 1989 in Borisov, Belarus. After graduating from a secondary art school, he went on to study at the Borisov State College of Architecture, but eventually chose not to pursue a degree. A digital illustrator since the early 2010s, he later transitioned to drawing and painting. In addition, Ilya Brezinski is active as a musician and tattoo artist. His artworks were featured in a number of art fairs and exhibitions and acquired by many private collectors, including high-profile celebrities.
