Viktor Marinjuk. Live carefully

Victor Marynyuk. Live carefully

Odessa Fine Arts Museum

January 24 – February 13, 2020

Victor Marinyuk is a legend of Odessa non-conformism.

He belongs to a group of artists who began their creative path at the same time as the destruction of the socialist realism canon. For three decades before, art in the Soviet Union was isolated from the world art process. It was this group in Odessa that overcame many years of isolation. It was these artists who absorbed and mastered the whole experience of the picturesque language of the twentieth century, coming through their own experience to emancipation of artistic form, color, spots, line, construction, dynamics. It was they who created the updated, modern version of Odessa “South Russian” school.

They were cramped within the aesthetics of “permissible” in the USSR, which is why they united in an informal club, organized apartment exhibitions, communicated with like-minded peoples who came from abroad, printed their works in samizdat and diaspora editions, and were under constant supervision of KGB who was afraid of everything independent and out of control.

The artists themselves repeatedly insisted that they did not consider themselves dissidents, that their purpose was creative freedom, not limited to the doctrinal attitudes of the Communist Party.

Victor Marynyuk’s range – from the early expressive experiments are consistent with the «severe style” in the early sixties – to the lyrical-geometric abstraction, organically combined with conditional linearity. An integral part of Marynyuk’s figurative system is his experience in monumental art. Hence – decorativism, generalization of forms and lines. Hence – a deep interest in the tradition of the monumental art of the school of Mykhailo Boychuk, combined with his experience of both Ukrainian folklore and contemporary European trends.

Among the artists of the Odessa group Viktor Marynyuk is distinguished by a special, delicate attitude to form and plastic.

Behind the external conditionality’s is hiding meaningful content. The combination of one’s own reflections and experiences with the primal, deep values of being human creates an unsettling, irrational, at the same time, intellectual and comprehended reality. In the modern world, where art reaches a level without personality, Marynyuk’s creativity, with its emphasis on what makes us human, remains the untouchable zone of humanity. The artist paints a personality, his particular individualism, self-esteem and self-confidence. Simple motifs are filled with tension and tranquility, ephemerality and fundamentality, uniqueness and mystery.

Achieving harmony is due to the nervous tension of the pulsating lines. Spectacular white space, the lines turn into a light outline. The impulse red spot enhances impression and perception. The earthly woman acquires a mythological depth. With minimal plastic means the artist expresses and elevates the woman, sacralised her image. So simple, without superfluous external efficacy, makes a woman the center of her universe.

Marynyuk’s images are isolated from the external world, they are not surrounded by time-honored objects. Only – white, only – light. It is so easy for the artist to give images of timeless, transhistorical features and bring them beyond the real.

“Simply it is wisely” says Viktor Marynyuk, and he convincingly proves it with his creativity. Looking at the images created by the artist, you are convinced that really about the essential, the primary can be said so simply if you “live carefully”, namely – to be attentive to the world, to see the beautiful in the ordinary and carefully to transfer your vision to the canvas.

It is so easy to be yourself, to follow your principles and ideals without adjusting to the criticisms and fleeting tastes of the public. It is so easy to engage in fine art in the world of total contemporary art with its many strategies and concepts.

It is so easy – to live carefully.

Olexander Roytdurd,

Tatiana Tokarchuk.

Odessa, 2020