"Ancient Dances" by Andrei Bazzaev-Skiff

"Ancient Dances" by Andrei Bazzaev-Skiff


Andrei Bazzaev-Skif's images and colors embody tradition and current events, which the artist endows with symbolic sounding, revealing new meanings. His colors, like ancient dances, involve in the space of the picture, in which the composition works like the scenography of the performance, adding the necessary dynamics to the images. The classic subject of the Nart epic, Soslan dancing on his socks on the edge of the sacred bowl of Ouatsamong, symbolically echoes the deep foundations of the artist's creativity, where he creates with an open heart at the very edge of the tragic in the modern world, and in the historical context.
Andrei Bazzaev-Skif is an artist deeply immersed in the cultural tradition and, at the same time, sharply responding to the painful points of modernity. All this together leads to a profound elaboration of the themes of his works. As a carrier and, one might say, custodian of the culture of ancient Alania, the Scythians, which are preserved in the Ossetian culture, he returns to the subjects of the Nart epic again and again in his work, embodying them in his artistic works. Each new interpretation is the result of deep immersion in the text, reflection and experience, when to "understand" is, indeed, to make it his own.
One of the important themes of the exhibition is the image of the Temple, which the artist interprets not only as a sacred architectural object, but also as the Temple of the human soul. The destruction of the Temple, the loss of values and meanings in history and modernity, these themes are developed by the artist in many works. But no less important is the idea of rebirth of the Temple, hope and light, which are associated with the experience of the ancestors, the search for truth, love and faith. In this context, it is impossible not to mention another theme of fundamental importance for the artist: the purpose of man and the mission of the artist. No matter how hard it is, the artist, like the sun, warming and burning, carries his gift, his mission. Andrei Bazzaev-Skif walks the way he was destined from above with faith in the rebirth and preservation of the Temple, bringing light and harmony to the world. That is why it is impossible to imagine Skif's creativity without love, eroticism, passion and beautiful, strong female images, without the music of his colors.
The tragedies of our time resonate in the artist's soul. Often he embodies them in symbolic images. Such was the large-scale painting "Battle", to which the term "anticipation" is fully applicable. Following the tradition of epic understanding of time, which is not linear and has no boundaries between the ancient and the present, the artist embodies the idea of the Nart epic that Narts come in especially difficult times, and in this symbolic sense the work acquires the sound of enlightened tragedy, in which tragic notes are supplemented by hope and light.
The searches and reflections are reflected in the artistic language of the master. In his recent works, he uses a new technique when the main image is supplemented by short color lines. These linear elements build up the composition of the picture in a special way, adding additional depth and drama. In this artistic technique, the philosophical nature of the composition, characteristic of the artist, appeared in a new way, in which the depth of centuries works through the ratio of spatial constructions, the relations of images and color plasticity, in a dialogue with the artist.
Elena Grigoryants