phantasmagoria
erik pobucky
30 may–16 june

In Phantasmagoria, Pobucky visually explores the fragility of the boundaries between beauty/decay, love/hate, connection/loneliness, love/hate and war/sex. Pobucky’s paintings question these dualities and the assumption that they are opposite extremes of the human experience. By showing the multiple hidden worlds within each overarching image he asks his viewer to consider them as expressions of the same human needs.

Erik Pobucky is a visual artist. Through the metanarrative that tells the story of a refugee’s journey from danger to safety, and how their struggles to forget their trauma ultimately lead to their destruction, his paintings explore the false dualisms we use to create boundaries in our world. He uses a range of traditional (acrylic/oil/watercolour paints, chalk, graphite pencil, and oil pastels) and non-traditional mediums (glues, resins, nails, tobacco, ash) to create visual representations of the complexity of the human experience. Each painting aims to capture the multiple hidden-worlds in the overarching moment to invite viewers to interrogate the boundaries they unconsciously see the world through.