FUTURES have an exhibition of new works by Tim Bučković, entitled; as, via, sets of gathering, the exhibition is on now and runs until 25 June.
The exhibition consits of mesmeric oil on linen paintings populated with dissolving figures engaged in bizarre rituals within a landscape that oscillates between flatness and depth. In these works, time, and painting’s history fold into the pictorial plane itself.
Tim’s practice pushes historical painting values through a sieve and reconstitutes those disparate parts into a pixel-like language that is distinctly its own. Informed by modernist and avant-garde practices; and the semiotic qualities of Yugoslavian and Eastern European monuments, graphics and animation, his dynamic compositions consist of unspecified rituals, fractured space, and architectonic planes. These works are laced with tension in a time/space, which is simultaneously neo-utopian, ominous, sci-fi and mystical – qualities found in alternative histories.
Tiny licks of paint are arranged in a loose and grid-like pattern, renewing pointillism in an oblique yet assured manner. The technique of creating a painting using the same sized brush has been said to be an unconscionable faux pas, but here the effect could easily be read as a kind of clever patterning or even a tapestry. The artist manages yet another trick with panache by building an impasto akin to brail creating a sculptural-like surface.
These works reward close study, but have a beacon-like presence from afar – a macro/micro magic trick. Tim’s ability to scramble space leaves the eye intoxicated and the viewer struggling to decipher the contents of these works embedded with both movement and stasis.
Tim Bučković (b. 1989) currently lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. He has studied painting at Monash University and the Victorian College of the Arts, and in the master class of Professor Katherina Grosse at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Working in painting and drawing, Tim Bučković examines the relationship images have to content associated with histories of art, creating forms which build on differing potencies of structures, modernism(s), and methods. His paintings are dialectical; they hold a plethora of opposites that rhyme with psychological potency – both abstract and figurative, specific yet universal, cubist and quasi digital.
FUTURES is a new commercial project space in Naarm/Melbourne. The space – which arose amidst pandemic – was conceived by Steven Stewart and Zara Sigglekow, with the express purpose of exposing important work of contemporary artists in the city. The gallery occupies a sinuous but workable 55 m2 exhibition in uptown Collingwood. FUTURES will debut at the Aotearoa Art Fair later this year, with a presentation of Bučković’s works. FUTURES will join five other young galleries and artist-run initiatives, upstairs at The Cloud, in He Iti.
Images: (above) Tim Bučković, sight, 2022. Oil on linen, 91.5 x 183 cm. (Left) sequence, 2022. Oil on linen, 38.5 x 41 cm. (Right) evasions, 2022. Oil on linen, 150 x 190 cm. Images all courtesy of the artist and FUTURES.
