Artist Konstantin Bessmertny
Russian-born and Macau-based painter Konstantin Bessmertny talks to Dominique Rowe about his anarchic artwork.
HK: Your work is often classical and humorous at the same time. What is going on in “La Danse”?
KB: The jokes in my paintings are not slapstick. They are jokes for professionals. The joke here is that Matisse is too hard, too sketchy. So I followed his lines, and continued until I took it one step further. I made it look like people were drunk, a bit out of shape. I was showing another side of it; what would have happened if Matisse had followed his sketch, and finished it in neo-classicist, romantic style.
HK: Bottoms are quite prominent in your work. Can you elaborate?
KB: Human beings see what they would like to see first. There are also lots of eyes and hands. In the “Gambling” series, there are a lot of bottoms, but that is just because, living in Macau, I paint what I see.
HK: So is nudity very important to you?
KB: Nudity is eternal. I’m not obsessed, but you cannot fight it - it is the only thing the artists left us from the ancient world and carried over into the contemporary world. It’s not pornography when I use it. I don’t like the shock game, so there is a limit, an element of self-censorship.
HK: Why do certain characters seem to appear repeatedly?
KB: The work is like a novel, a republic. I like to use the same characters, and sometimes, they go from one chapter, or painting, to the other.
HK: This world you've created is full of anarchy and rebellion. What is this place?
KB: My paintings are not about Macau, but it inspires me. When you are working and living there, you find everything so ridiculous. I’m surprised that people don’t see it. There is so much to feed my imagination when I work. It’s like a fairytale land.
HK: What is going on in your “New York” series?
KB: This is my philosophical approach; each culture has developed with its own history, its own fairy tales. But the United States has none of this mythology. So the work is a contemporary fairytale - a kids story, but for adults. I like to put puzzles into my work, secret codes. I don’t like purely decorative art. A Rothko becomes boring when you have to look at it every day for 20 years. It gives me pleasure that somebody will call, 20 years later, and say, “I just found what you did there - naughty you.”