Bessmertny is a child of the crossroads, born in the Russian-Chinese border town of Blagoveshchensk and moved to Macau with his wife Gala in 1994. Educated in the Vladivostok Academy of Fine Arts in classical painting he is trained in the skillful mastery of European traditional painting that he chooses or chooses not to use at will. Very well read on many subjects, his works traverse between philosophy, politics, theology, art history and music. However, these subjects are just devices to arrive at something deeper, which is his cutting insight and observations of human behavior as a parody of life.
In his newest series of works entitled “STIR FRY” Bessmertny traverses our connected and disconnected worlds between East and West within the backdrops of European settings. Within a stir fry the elements are still distinguishable. They don’t melt together as in a stew. They remain as distinct items within a contained vessel. Bessmertny likens his life living in Asia with the diversity of peoples and cultures all within the global city of Hong Kong to a Stir Fry. The English, the Scots, the Cantonese, the Mainlanders, the Japanese, the Russians, the Koreans, etc. make for an interesting mix of both global exchanges set within very traditional cultures that can be both nationalistic or clinging to traditional cultural expressions. This may be considered as the forms in which traditional culture is expressed, how it forms part of the identity and heritage of a traditional community, as well as how they are passed down from generation to generation. Within this series Bessmertny touches upon the Scottish Referendum, the Hong Kong protests, the American ideologues all intertwined within a parody of provocative thoughts and ideas. Bessmertny’s paintings have the appeal of a grandiose Baroque masterpiece yet the cutting edge of a modern-day samurai. He touches on many a taboo subject yet the works still hold an air of traditional elegance.
