Dragan Bibin (b.1984, Serbia) uses cycles of oil paintings to explore the idea of legacy – both his as an artist as well as our civilisation’s. After “Human Condition” (2014) and “Unfinished” (2017), his new cycle “Flood Waves” arose out of his interest in Romantic art critic John Ruskin’s theory of “The Sublime” in Turner’s work. In this theory Ruskin analyses the catharsis one experiences from witnessing the nature’s scale and power through floods and storms. Applying these notions to his everyday visual surroundings Bibin created these cascades of crumbling walls portrayed as waves of red hollow bricks. Representing both the Tower of Babel and the Great Flood, these canvases are, as always in Bibin’s work, filled with Balkan historical and cultural references: the cheap red bricks, the Ktitor, or Byzantine-era church builder, the crash helmets, the working gloves, an entire visual lexicon readily available outside his Novi Sad studio.
