Azat Basyrov (1988, Ufa, the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia) is a young contemporary artist, illustrator, and author of collages.
Azat Basyrov was born, resides, and works in Ufa. Azat has loved drawing since childhood. After finishing high school, he enrolled in the Arts and Graphics Department at Bashkir State Pedagogic University. “This is when my more or less conscious immersion in creative processes started,” relates the young artist. Right now, Azat Basyrov is engaged, as he confesses, in the quest for his own style: “Every new project is something new for me, something really different from what I did before”. Basyrov is trying different techniques: drawing with graphite, experimenting in the style of abstraction, using mixed techniques, collages, attempting to create his own techniques (“computer experiments, a kind of collage painting”). Starting in February 2008, the artist has been participating in exhibitions – his works have been exhibited in Ufa, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, and Moscow, including several personal exhibitions; besides, the works of the young artist were showcased by Gallery SHCHUKIN at the ARTPALMBEACH fair for contemporary art (2013, Florida, USA).
“Reflexion” (Latin reflexiō bending back) is a series of quite large-scale, a-meter-by-a-meter, works by the artist, done in a technique that he calls digital collage painting. The bright dark symbol in the center of each of the works, which is somewhat redolent of Rorschach spots, seems at first glance like it has been painted against a colored background. But once you take a good look at both the symbol and the background, you’ll start discerning familiar pictures – often visual clichés: movie screenshots, photos, drawings, each of which, in connecting to another, evokes different associations depending on the viewpoint or personal background of the viewer. “The perception of the visual image, its first analysis is not what it is in reality,” explains Azat Basyrov. “It’s just an illusion created from stereotypes and clichés. To be able to reach the real, one needs to make time for it, “rake through the garbage”, and get to the very essence of what is laid down in every one of us”.