Curly braces in Ignition’s queries just do a string substitution, using the default string conversion for whatever is inside the curly braces. Use a named query to pass complex types like dates directly to the DB via JDBC parameters. This avoids the string conversion. The reporting module also allows ‘?’ substitution (like the system.db.Prep() script functions) which also pass parameters without converting to strings.
If you cannot avoid the string substitution, you will have to convert the dates to strings yourself in a format your database likes. This varies by database brand.