Taras Polataiko: Scotoma

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Untitled (detail) 1994 acrylic on particle board

Vision and understanding are intimately connected - many of us never give it a second thought. Taras Polataiko is notorious for challenging the obvious. In Scotoma (the world means a gap or dark area in the field of vision), he invokes ideas of vision, blindness, fear of the invisible and surveillance. Comprised of fourteen life-size trompe l'oeil self portraits, Scotoma is strategically set within an altered architectural space. Precise and disconcerting, these paintings suggest subtle, and frequently overlooked, relationship among perception, vision and knowing, and the forms and circumstances of representation. Taras Polataiko was born in the Ukraine, and he came to the University of Saskatchewan as a graduate student in 1990. His installations and paintings have been presented across Canada and in Europe.