Shanghai-based Belarusian artist Vladimir Dubko creates eye-crossingly intricate, but surprisingly human, digital compositions.

Vladimir Dubko’s art is doubly hexed. Firstly, Dubko works as an art director and commercial illustrator. While art appreciators may be delighted and amused by business-like artists who hire teams to churn out pieces, this amusement rarely extends to actual businessmen. Secondly, his works are created digitally via processes that are often dismissed as cheap trickery.

In his ‘Detailed Delusions’ show, Dubko’s images of circus acts, amusement park rides, impossible trees and outlandish machines may be tricks but they certainly aren’t cheap. In some illustrations, the level of detail is astounding, built up with layer upon layer of silhouettes. The negative spaces come alive with hints of even more visual content. Although they look flat on first glance, like inks or watercolours, on closer inspection Dubko’s pictures are full and textured.

With digital obviously you can do even more complicated work but it’s quite hard to get rid of this machine feeling when you’re doing it

“I was sort of aiming to get this feeling that it could be traditional media even though when you see the works in detail I’m not using any generic instruments or a computer that reproduces these watercolours,” Dubko says. “I’m happy that I’m finally getting to this point where the images are becoming that complex that they suggest something that reminds people of traditional work. People are saying that it reminds them of old 19th century, 18th century art.”

Another tactic is to distance the images from computer screens. To this end, Dubko is transforming some of his digital works onto wooden installations. “It’s interesting for me to make something that is not only going to stay inside a computer but can be applied to materials,” he says. “I do hope to change perceptions of digital images, to see more art in them.”

While Dubko doesn’t want to create overtly digital images, he also says, “I don’t want to repeat the effects that can easily be produced with watercolours or ink.”

“I kind of like to balance an edge. I don’t want to copy the old traditional media. I just want to create digital art but make it more approachable for people. It still has this warmth of traditional media but the language is already different. With digital obviously you can do even more complicated work but it’s quite hard to get rid of this machine feeling when you’re doing it, just with colours and everything. When you’re doing it by hand, people always make mistakes, and this is how you get the feeling of something warm and nice.”

Can a digital artist make mistakes? “I was trying to,” Dubko says. “It didn’t work. It worked the other way around when I put a lot of work into one piece, getting it more complicated going into more detail then it kind of starts looking closer to a world we can see before our eyes.”

Dubko studied Communications Design at University in Belarus. He later spent a year at Fabrica, Benetton’s “communications research centre,” where artists are given opportunities both to develop their own work and to contribute to commercial projects. Dubko has since worked as an illustrator for Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, and is now Art Director for advertising firm McCann Erikson. He says his commercial work has helped him to develop the quality of his craft.

“I do like spontaneous works but probably what interests me is the process of creating,” he says. “You can put tonnes of hours in to create one image. I think my work is for people who really like details.”

Martin Kemble, director of Art Labor, is one of those people. “I don't wish to call [Dubko’s art] shallow, but it leans more toward the sophisticated decorative. This is not an artist who is expressing his internal angst for everyone's ‘genuine’ appreciation; it is just good, smart work where the excellent design skills of the artist are on clear display.”

Opening party 6-11pm, 5 December. Art Labor, 10 Yongjia Lu, near Maoming Lu. Tel: 6431 7782. Web: www.artlaborgallery.com

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