Chase | Oil on Panel | 100 x 72 cm | 2015

Dead End | Oil on Linen | 110 x 160 cm | 2015

Push | Chase | Pull | Inst.

Artist Statement: “Once I woke in the middle of the night, got up, and took a white shirt that hanged over my chair. As I did so, I realized that the left sleeve was very long, so I began to pull it. It was so long that it went out of the room, all the way into the bathroom. After pulling it, trying to get to its end, I found myself in front of the darkened bathroom, pulling stronger and realizing that someone or something was pulling from the other side. For me, this vivid dream is a representation of the darker side of the human psyche, which pulls us into inner darkness, as well as our often futile resistance to that pull.”

Dragan is the quiet painter of the absence and the dread. He achieves this by involving the spectator into the calm and isolated regions of the characters or places he depicts. With his work, Dragan is able to present ordinary reality in a suggestive yet questioning manner—giving a sense of something unsettling happening behind the scenes. Animals are often present in his works, and through them he explores themes within the human condition: our struggles, apprehensions, and anxieties. In Dragan Bibin’s eerie interiors, doors open on black nothingness and expectant animals play with our fears and nightmares. This claustrophobic feeling is balanced by poetic, sometimes comical elements.