Vitaly Komar,  half of the collaborative artistic team with Alexander Melamid, is very much like the famed Russian bear of his homeland: large, amiable and eminently huggable, His smiling eyes behind round rimmed glasses (yet another circle in his overall rotundity) flash with the active mind of a visual poet.

In direct contrast to their former iconoclastic art, Vitaly's joy is contagious as he explains their latest work, a fusion of mysticism and science to create an art that has healing powers. It is a very personal journey indeed to this point for when Vitaly was undergoing cardiac surgery he had to be revived with electric shock. "I felt as though I was in the Moscow hospital where I was born and saw life for the first time. We all have this experience but time has erased our memory of it. I had the chance to re-experience that primal flash of light ...my personal Big Bang". He claims ancient symbol the six pointed star, adopted by Jews as their emblem,  flashed in to his view to which he added ancient icons, the spiral, yin/yang, hourglass, dove of peace, Orobouros and skull transforming them into an artistic vocabulary with the power to heal.


Each design, mixed media drawings and collages with watercolor, pastel, crayon and colored markers, plus four oil and tempura 8' x 4' paintings on canvas, has both good and evil elements. The most striking is the six sided swastika inherent in all interlocking designs (Vasily claims it is "an accident of design") which they highlight in red, black and white, the colors of "evil and vanity".  Therefore the mood created is a conflict of discomfort and serenity, with the hopes that serenity will prevail as it is confined within the greater symbol of the star.

These designs are imposed on hand drawn graph paper and infused with radiant color that the artists hope to see one day translated into stained glass windows. I look forward to that day.

The exhibit "Komar & Melamid: Symbols of the Big Bang" runs through February 23rd at the Yeshivah University Museum, 15 West `16th Street, 212 294-8301