Mykola Bilous

Ukrainian artist, inventor of his own original method of colour harmonization. Mykola Bilous invented a new method of harmonizing colours by inversion. However, inversion, colour change, occurs under certain laws. The first one is the use of the “basic tone” (a mixture of three main colours — red, blue, and yellow), the second one is the application of a thin layer of open colours on the principle of complementarity — the connection of the main and additional colours, which are opposite. These laws were developed by the theorists at the Bauhaus School. Bilous uses the basic tone as a shadow, and colours are the light. He works in open colours.

The black colour symbolises only the air, which is completely excluded from the main composition. The impression is that the heroes’ figures are brightly lit at night, or — the state of the theatrical scene, where the background is immersed in the darkness. The plot of the picture for the artist is secondary, compared with the colour resolution. There is a combination of open colours without shades. The combination of relief and posterity, according to the author, combines two spaces — sculptural and optical, thus the works are simultaneously flat and voluminous. This formal decision is absolutely original and has a slightly different semantic series than the plot line of the canvas itself. Array and colour arrangement have the key value. Mykola Bilous is a post-medial artist.  Often in his painting he brings back the film frames, which operators borrowed from classics of painting.

Born on March 31, 1956, in the village of Lesovychi, Kyiv region. 1982 — graduated from the Samokysha Crimean Art College. 1987 — graduated from Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute. 1983 — internship at the University of Art and Design Halle, Germany. 1988- 1996 — taught art at the Department of Design of Architectural Environment, Department of Art Pottery of Yuriy Kondratyuk Poltava National Technical University.  Since 2007 he is the resident of the TSEKH Gallery. His works are in the collections of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, city galleries and private collections of Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, Turkey, Lithuania, Latvia, the USA, Bahrain, the United Kingdom, Russia and Ukraine.

 

The artist’s work has been presented in Lithuania several times at the international contemporary art fair ArtVilnius, and in 2013 the artist was voted the best foreign artist of the fair. In 2015, the solo exhibition Only Color by M. Belous was held in Vilnius in two venues, Titanikas, the exhibition halls of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, and gallery Meno Niša. The artist’s works are in collections in Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and other countries.