Artists - Part 85

Oleksandr Balbyshev

Oleksandr Balbyshev, born in 1985, is a Ukranian artist.  His art has two different main themes.  First, he is gay, and he uses art to try to understand the nature of male identity and the stigma of the male nude.  Second, he reinterprets symbols of the USSR, the empire that occupied his motherland for seven decades.  In particular, he reinterprets old portraits of Lenin and other Soviet leaders into something funny, not scary.  We will look at paintings of his first main theme, exploring the stigma of the male nude.

The Hide and Seek in the Rocks, 2016, was an early work exploring this theme.  It's quite realistic and could almost be a photograph (but it's a painting).

Catboy, 2019.  Balbyshev commented: "About 30 years ago, a group of feminist artists, Guerrilla Girls, decided to determine the ratio of male and female nudes presented on canvases exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It turned out that male nudes are only 15%. ... I would like to see our culture represent naked men as frequently as we do naked women to remove the shock value of the nude male. And this is my goal as an artist." 

I Swear It Wasn't Me, 2020.  Balbyshev's comment: "Ukrainians have always been famous for their urge for excessive decorative effects and embellishment. That’s why I have a craving for decorativeness and the use of ornaments in my artworks."

Bather with the Great Wave, 2020, copies Hokusai's famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa and adds a foreground figure plus some rainbow coloration in the background.

St. Sebastian, 2022.  Balbyshev's comment: "In this series, I integrate a male body's sensual beauty with paintings of world-famous artists ... This is a kind of reflection on how the art of the last centuries could have been if the male body had not been discriminated against."

There have been many historic paintings of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, but none of them are nude; Sebastian always wears a loincloth.

Guy on the Shore, 2025.  Balbyshev's comment: "Within queer art discourse, the male body has often been commodified or censored—either eroticized as spectacle or erased entirely. By placing this nude figure in a lush, otherworldly setting of lilies and dappled light, I reclaim his form from voyeurism and invisibility alike. He is neither passive object nor heroic ideal but a being in quiet communion with nature—an act of radical self-acceptance against cultural norms that police desire and shame the body."

Lovers, 2025.  Balbyshev's comment: "In “Lovers,” I continue my exploration of queer identity through the visual vocabulary of Cubism, deeply inspired by the groundbreaking works of Pablo Picasso. This painting portrays two intertwined male figures whose fragmented, mask-like faces symbolize the complexities and hidden realities of queer love."

The Reclining Nude, 2025.  Balbyshev's comment: "The Reclining Nude revisits one of the most enduring archetypes in Western art — the reclining figure — to question who is allowed to embody beauty, desire, and vulnerability.  For centuries, this pose has been synonymous with the idealized female body — passive, sensual, created to be seen. In this work, I reclaim that gesture through a queer lens, offering the male body as both subject and storyteller."

The River's Son, 2025, is a queer counterpart to Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

Unconventional Hearts, 2025, is an exploration of love that defies societal conventions.

We end with Kiss, 2025.  Balbyshev's comment: "Kiss is a meditation on the fragmented nature of queer love ... Two male figures intertwine, merging and dissolving into abstraction, their forms simultaneously embracing and disintegrating. The kiss itself is obscured, reflecting the forced anonymity of same-sex love in a world that still dictates who is allowed to exist openly.  Kiss captures the paradox of queer intimacy: bound yet yearning, fragmented yet whole, unseen yet impossible to ignore. It is a reminder that love, no matter how abstracted or restrained, will always find a way to exist."

My comment: this recent work is more abstract than his previous work, but it's also the only one that I've seen that features an erection, so maybe the future of Balbyshev's art is looking up.