"negativity can be understood by enhancing the positivity and the beauty"
EMRACH USKOVSKI
Born in 1992 in Slovakia and partly grew up in Istanbul, Turkey Emrach Uskovski’s artistic practice gravitates around a vast palette of cultural references where you often find contrasts. His sources of inspiration spans from Japanese wood cut prints and manga to street art and classic music. Whether painting on walls, canvas or choosing digital support, he challanges him self by seeking the perfect balance between simplicity and complexity.
Could you walk me through your artistic background
I was drawing from the early primary school. But it evolved in high school when I started to do graffiti. I kind of liked the way the street artists share their art with people that doesn’t usually come across art in their daily life. That is why I started to do mural art and mostly commissioned art works on walls. Further on I started painting on canvas and do digital art.
In that perspective what would your art aim to say to the viewer.
So off course it’s very individual from art piece to art piece. Sometimes I have an idea and I am creating the art piece around that specific idea, but most of the time to be honest I create an art piece from an inner inspiration, like an inner picture if you want. So, most of the time I don’t have this fix concept or idea to address global warming or something like that. I’m just creating something and after a while it manifests itself. Then I realize what it is. It’s a very interesting process of doing art, sometimes it’s very… the meaning it’s just there you know.
What about the art piece with the grizzly?
The title is ‘River’. Again, it’s a torso of a woman. I choose mostly woman because I think that they are representing beauty in this world. Her hair is presented as a river with salmons trying to swim against the flow. On top of it all, there is a grizzly rising. The river flow and these fishes are people that don’t follow the crowd and they are trying to get their own way and their own paths, despite dangers and its difficulties, and that is represented by the grizzly.
You started on walls so that must be very different from painting on canvas and moving on towards digital art. How did your technique change?
Yes, for example with street art you are used to big walls. The space is huge so the details are not the first line, or the priority. When the size is so big then even small details are big. But indoors it gets smaller. I always choose 1.5 x 1 m in size, because after a big wall you can’t go on with small canvas. I tried it, but I was not satisfied at all.
It is also the design and decorative aspect of the size and the size is perfect, it fills up the wall without filling the whole wall. It’s the maximum and minimum that I can do indoors. With digital art, a whole spectra of possibilities has opened doors for new expressions and technical solutions. For instance, the making of 3D art pieces.
At what point did you choose to go towards vivid colors?
It was about challenging myself a little bit, so I decided that it’s too boring without colors. I started with color pens. The thing with beauty in art is, you have to go out of your comfort zone because you never know what is outside of that zone. And for me it was drawing these sketches but then you are asking your-self if there is more behind. And that is the point when you break the ice and open a whole new world of colors.
You have titles on your art pieces and how important are they to understand your art?
Putting names and titles can limit the experience, I put one-word titles.
I don’t prefer to put titles but it is good as a little guideline having titles. Like Emrach for instance why should I limit myself just to be Emrach when we can be just anything that we want.
It’s about finding some balance there between leaving doors open for interpretation and in the same time guidance to your thought and inner universe.
Is there something premeditated that you want the viewer to experience when they look at your art?
The thing that I want the audience to experience is basically a new perspective, with enhanced beauty. I love beauty in general. Even if I communicate a very negative subject, actually it’s shown by its beauty. Not by showing the negativity of that certain issue but reversibly, they would be amazed and will become aware of the subject I address through the medium of beauty.
Does your personal back ground have an impact on the subject choices in your art?
It’s for sure a reflection of my life, and a reflection of my opinion. But I don’t think that I am choosing it intentionally. It starts as an inner picture, an inner vision. There is not particularly a matter of themes in my art, but rather an aesthetic style I would say. There is a common red thread, with a very lean design, so to speak, and a touch of complexity. A complexity contrasted with simplicity. It is the iPhone of art. There is this complete aspect of it that makes the beauty of an iPhone, and that makes you wonder, think of it or just enjoy the simplicity at the first glance. But then, when you look closely there is a world of complex ideas. Simple and lean. No edges. Your eye just flows on the canvas with all of these aspects, in the end, when you see the totality of a unified design. My aim is to make the viewer swipe their gaze all over the canvas. The colors and the figurative is an aesthetic entity. One.
Have the choice of colors changed through time?
I was always working with vivid colors but of course balance is like you said, sometimes more challenging than the art itself. To make that variety of different colors… being in such balance in the same time, that is also a research in itself. The colors are one of the most challenging parts of my art. But it is getting more and more refined. I can see this unbalanced color combinations that I was doing before. When I look at it now, I can clearly see that I look at it in a different way.
That brings me to the thought of other conversations that we have had previously about Japanese art, that they challenge themselves to perfection. Is that something you can recognize yourself in?
As I told you I’m a huge fan of Japanese culture. I like the style and their way of thinking, constant developing and full of surprises. Even in business. The Japanese philosophy behind self-development is amazing. When things are perfect, they are still trying to make it more perfect. That fascinates me, in the making of every art piece I’m kind of exited and scared at the same time because I’m trying new things. I don’t know if it’s because of the excitement or being horrified with the thought that what if it’s not going to turn out the way I wanted it to.
How does your background influence your art would you think?
Well I was always interested in animated films and manga. Color wise, my art kind of reflects my experience in life, it was not too bright, I had some very dark life experiences so very early on I balanced it up by choosing more colorful, much more vivid colors. The real world is sometimes dull and sad enough. I’m also reflecting this mental universe that I have inside my head, which is full of life and colors, full of energy.
Would you say that some of your pieces has a kind of sociopolitical agenda, by the choice of subject?
Yes, for example in the art piece ‘Mirkat’, a female torso with 4 mircats on her head surrounded by flowers. That piece actually explains that we are surrounding us more and more with indoor plants and at the same time we are taking terrain from the natural habitat of the animals. The head represents the small space that we have left for the animal world. However, i’m not addressing the subject by representing forests that are being cut or suffering species. I’m showing this, on the contrary, in the most beautiful way I can. The viewers hopefully would become aware of the topic in the art piece, the negativity can be understood by enhancing the positivity and the beauty.
How do you do your research?
Research is a constant journey but the style I created, I found in the span of four years. Creating art and just realize that it’s not the technical perfection that satisfies your soul. At times I have looked for more complexity and much more different aspects in the art. Figurative or abstract. By doing that it was my only way to realize what was satisfying or not. Finally, I found the right dose between the simplicity and complexity that I was looking for. This balance between the two. Which is very crucial. So, it doesn’t overwhelm you or on the contrary is not too empty. I see all this as a journey, not a research, to find yourself or that aesthetic balance.
Does your art influence other parts of your life?
Art is considered as a creativity and that creativity imbue my whole life. Throughout my life I was trying to create this world that I am imagining and that I want to live in. So that is the reason why I’m implying this style and simplicity all over my way of life. From fashion to furniture, even to thoughts, to mindsets. You don’t have to have such complex thoughts. I think the thoughts must be very clear, and simple. We have a tendency to make things too complex. Since the beauty is in the simplicity. Creating simplicity is to me creating beauty.
What is the art piece that made the most impact on you?
I went to the Slovak Philharmonic and there was this rhapsody concert with a variety of composers including Rachmaninov. I was reading the brochure of the different composers and they were almost overfilled with explanations and meaning. But when I came to the text about Rachmaninov, there was this one sentence putting the finger on what I feel with my art as well. “I am not trying to put so much meaning into my music”, he said, “I just want to make beautiful music.”