Recent acquisition: Tim Bučković

“I first saw a small landscape painting by Tim hovering in the virtual space of a bathroom-mirror as part of Spring1883, in Sydney, in 2019. The surface of the composition looked painstakingly stitched with strings of sticky oil, almost woven together by solid patches of lustrous texture in earthy-tones reminiscent of moss and mud. I was immediately transported far beyond the buzz of the art-fair, tumbling into a murky horizon mapped out for my imagination to explore.

The active and chaotic fragmentation of the painting’s inner space is most compelling, particularly the way perspective is used to open-up a metaphorical plane, a small-portal through which we play witness to scenes of physical and spiritual activity between faceless distorted figures that rise like smoke amongst bodies of water, units of oil, contours of grass and hay.

Tim’s work aims for an otherworldly strangeness through a synthesis of abstracted form with emotional or spiritual experience, drawing on mystical and occult themes to express the dark and irrational aspects of our nature. His highly personalised and esoteric dreamscapes build an imaginary world of human encounter, a wonderous realm beyond the rational and realistic world of immediate appearances. 

Much like the disillusioned Symbolist artists and poets of the late nineteenth century, Tim’s work seeks an escape from the realities of an accelerated technological society, expressing personal dreams and an idiosyncratic vision of fantasy through outlined shape, fluid form, colour and composition. Symbolist art grew from the anxieties of the modern world and its keen sense of mortality, addressing themes of love, fear, pain, dirt, blood and death. These themes seem pertinent to the cultural mood of the day, when, at a time framed by political and environmental turmoil, we seek out opportunities for some prior/other/new relationship with the natural and spiritual worlds.”

Oscar Capezio, March 2022
Curator, ANU Art Collection
Drill Hall Gallery, Kamberri/Canberra

More information about Tim Bučković can be found here