Dragan Bibin

Themes: Horror, Liminality, The Unknown, Religion, Labor, Balkan Folklore

Dragan Bibin fabricates feelings of isolation and dread through the use of the ordinary. Born in 1984, in Zrenjanin, Serbia, his paintings are interwoven with references to Balkan history, culture, and folklore.

In his 2017 series “Unfinished”, he juxtaposes Byzantine period art iconography with contemporary objects associated with labor, such as construction helmets and worker’s gloves. Religious imagery is prevalent throughout the series, whether in a crown of thorns resting upon a construction worker’s helmet, or the black, void-like holes in a pair of white leather gloves as Christ’s stigmata.

The series description on Bibin’s website states that the works seek to explore the tension between visible suffering and forced optimism seen in the roles of the Martyr and the working-class hero. This theme appears most tangibly in Plague in which a faceless and shirtless worker donning blue-collar working attire, a white construction cap, and gloves postured on his hands and knees performs self-flagellation with a black whip. A red line forms on his back and marks a vertical that cuts subtly across the entire canvas.

Bibin, Dragan. Plague. 2017, oil on linen.

Plague Detail.

Dragan’s works all serve to create feelings of isolation and dread through the use of the ordinary. His earlier works within his Deimos series explore these emotions and our anxieties through the use of animals as subjects. The series utilizes doors open to black nothingness, windows in the dead of night, white cloths which disappear into the void, and expectant animals to invoke our fear of the unknown.

Drawing upon his own dreams for inspiration, Bibin’s artist statement claims that the imagery represents “the darker side of the human psyche, which pulls us into inner darkness, as well as our often futile resistance to that pull”.

Dragan’s approach to making recalls the importance the Surrealists placed onto dreams and their potential for unlocking the individual’s subconscious. Processes not under the control of the conscious mind, like dreaming, were thought by the Surrealists to have a greater emotional authenticity and value than any product produced by conscious thought. Dragan Bibin’s work certainly embraces the surrealistic qualities of dreams and even nightmares, allowing us to relive them in waking life.