Untitled 1991

Oleg Holosiy made this untitled painting, and the way he’s slapped on the paint, it's all about the process, the pure joy of pushing pigment around. The colors are muted, almost monochromatic, but it's the texture that grabs you. Thick, creamy strokes build up these semi-abstracted forms, figures maybe? There's a real physicality to the surface, like you could reach out and feel the artist's hand moving across the canvas. Look at that drippy yellow mark near the left. It's a small thing, but it disrupts the whole image, adds a note of discord, a little hiccup in the flow. Holosiy’s work reminds me a bit of Albert Oehlen, that same sense of controlled chaos, of letting the paint do its thing. It's like he's saying, "Here's the mess, here's the beauty, make of it what you will." Art doesn't always have to be neat and tidy. Sometimes the most interesting stuff happens when you embrace the ambiguity, the questions, the sheer, glorious mess of it all.