Twórczość białoruskiego artysty ulicznego Andrieja Busła

Abstrakt

The study focuses on unexamined representations and miscellaneous instances of the diverse creativity of the Belarusian street artist, Andrei Busel (also known as Hutkasmachna). The study was based on interpretative works analysing Busel’s artistic forms of expression: Eternal in Passing. Artwork of European Masters in the Public Space of Minsk, From Streets to Art Gallery. On Reception of Street Art, and Appropriation of Urban Space: Objects, Installations, Interventions. On the basis of selected examples, an analysis of interpretations of relatively obscure works by European masters was performed, as they were placed by Busel in dilapidated and rundown parts of Minsk. These were works by such artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Memling, Jan Vermeer van Delft. When processing the fragments from their works, he applied a mixture of techniques and tools (cut-out, airbrush, prints, posters, paper sculptures, various types of paints, brushes, scissors, glue, and massive sheets of paper). Busel is the first Belarusian artist to move some of his works from the urban space into a gallery (project: Aeternus et momentum, 2011, ‘Ў’ Gallery in Mińsk), where they were in the form of large-format photographs mounted on stretcher bars. The exposition illustrated his artistic creative process: firstly, he reconstructed the European masterpieces in a real space before photographing them, and eventually, using the photographs to redisplay them on canvas. The article also presents other forms of Busel’s illegal appropriation of urban space, such as street-art objects, installations and interventions, e.g., Bridge (2012), or International Baroque. Another issue discussed in the final section of the article is a brand new street-art trend developing in Belarus – the so-called fundamental suprematism (abbreviated to ‘fuprematism’), i.e., the visual interaction of municipal services with the output of Minsk-based street artists.