Vitaly Pushnitsky: Fields
by Maria Borshchevska
Piercing through Fields, the series of paintings and works on paper by Vitaly Pushnitsky, the horizon line seems to present a kind of fulcrum of human experience, flickering between the perceived and imaginary. Composed of vibrant stripes and colour fields, the scenes configure into landscapes, yet remain palpably dream-like. Devoid of figures, the images seem to be set at dusk, emphasising the sense of uncertainty and transience of the depicted moment.
Concluding the tripartite body of work commenced in 2018, Fields follow the series titled Garden and Forest respectively, and reflect the artist’s renewed interest in the relationship between introspective gaze and physical perception, fuelled by his Buddhist practice. In each image the artist strives to reflect a given instance of lived experience with maximum intensity. For Pushnitsky, repeated tracing of the horizon in landscape presents “a setting for observing oneself”, for radically reflecting on the hard-wired circuits of thought and action.
In this seemingly apolitical series, Pushnitsky’s intense introspection betrays an emphatic desire to locate one’s identity and morality in response to the immanent present. In times like this, amid diminishing individual freedoms and raging war, aesthetic and metaphysical enquiry can offer a mode of individual resistance, whilst speaking beyond a specific political moment.
Please read the full exhibition essey by Maria Borshchevska here:
