Last supper 1988

Oleg Holosiy made this painting, Last Supper, with oil on canvas. Looking at it now, I get a sense of the artmaking as a kind of performance. The paint is applied with such urgency, you can almost feel his hand moving across the canvas, smearing the paint to create these figures. The table is like a stage, bathed in a pink light that feels both eerie and intimate. The figures are like actors caught in a moment of high drama. My eye keeps getting drawn to the main figure. The way Holosiy has rendered his face – almost like a mask, with these piercing eyes and exaggerated features – makes him look both powerful and vulnerable. There’s a rawness to this painting that I find really compelling. It reminds me of some of the German Expressionists, like Emil Nolde, who were also interested in exploring the darker side of human nature through art. Ultimately, it is a painting that embraces ambiguity, a space for multiple interpretations.