Marko Kolomytskyi, "Through the Touch of My Hand"

Marko Kolomytskyi's work has always been exacting, held close like the reins of a wild horse. In "Through the Touch of My Hand," he lets go, showing drawings for the first time: three oil pastel and charcoal works of bold color and giant gestures. Renaissance doesn't come without letting it out. About Can three drawings capture the entirety of the human experience? The question, which will seem prideful at first, emerges from truth-seeking and a humble attempt at deciphering all that the works in this exhibition are expressing, at once immediately – through colors, shapes, and mysteries we think we can solve – and silently, with meaning hidden behind the bold and energetic marks left on the paper. Looking at these works at a distance, we are stricken by their corporeal dimension – their energy is explosive. The large and vigorous lines that seem to have been made in one breath, with continuous strokes of the hand, in strenuous motions – here, our brain will try to recreate images we can understand, as it always does in front of what we perceive as abstraction. Shapes come together to form silhouettes we can name. Coming closer, it becomes less about what we think we figuratively can make of, and more about what the lines reveal about the artist metaphysically. The private memories. The overtly intimate emotions, held close with utter restraint, and let run freely onto the paper. When familiar with the personal trajectory of the artist, a history of displacement and loss, one could be tempted to look at his work solely through that scope of melancholy, sadness, or longing. And this would be a grand mishap and misunderstanding, as Kolomytskyi is not merely re-playing or exhibiting lived traumas plainly: he is, and perhaps unbeknownst to him, using upheavals as a means to transformation and transcendence. Walking away from the carefully polished forms his work had thus far embraced, Kolomytskyi harnesses a more rebellious rendition in his approach to drawing. Akin to a primal scream, the act itself of drawing is cathartic here. Pains and sorrows held in are given permission to be expelled freely, without controlling their forms or aesthetics. And with it, we watch him dance with heart over intellect, freedom over control, unearthing over seeking. The disappearance of the physicality of the present turned past, the quest for means of preserving it in its entirety – a butterfly pinned to a board – the philosophical yearning for understanding if that endeavor can ever be accomplished, the obsession with becoming immortal beings, and how our memories can remain alive… the answer is looking at us viewers looking at the work. For these works, themselves an attempt at immortalizing visions the artist has, are embodiments of the past captured and brought into the future. The drawings stand here as a temporal bridge, and reveal what will be born from that very past, from the loss, from the shadows and faces haunting our minds. Love, fear, mourning, hope, detachment, joy, curiosity, stillness, confusion, chaos, all notches of the human experience infusing these drawings, whisper to us that one must first die to find eternity. “Through the touch of my hand” could very well be the story of a resurrection, one the artist is inviting us to witness. His own. _____ The works exhibited in “ Through the touch of my hand” were recently awarded the Prix de Dessin Hélène Diamond in Paris. Read more Toggle Painting