Love Entered the City
The Love Entered the City exhibition opened at the Blok A Gallery. It presents 2001-2002 graphic works by Kyiv-based painter Andriy Levytsky. Levytsky’s new works are united by a common theme — a city as a certain kind of universe, diverse and polysemantic in its manifestations. The works are inspired by impressions from jazz music and trips to European cities. The synthesis of sight and auditory perception defines the structure of the artist’s creations.
Graphic works are horizontally oriented, which makes them look more panoramic. This is not a city landscape in the traditional meaning of the word, but rather a landscape of soul, a reflection of various moods permeated with optimistic view on the world. The details — trees, houses, mountains, faces, fonts, etc. — form a certain pattern; every detail seems to proceed from the previous one, and the painter’s brush moves freely, following his imagination, the material, and rhythm. A natural, though strictly organized from the inside, visual rank is formed. It is saturated with moods, reflections, memories, and associations: letters and artistic quotations are put over the landscape, creating an uneven “blues” rhythm.
Soft coloring sets off the expressiveness of line and stroke. Levytsky uses intaglio technique which embraces various methods of metal works: engraving (dry needle, chisel, and mezzo tinto) along with etching (aquatinta, open etching, etched stroke). Combination of graphic chiseling and picturesque etching allows the artist to create a complicated image with wide range of shades, tones, and texture. The opportunity to paint freely with a needle on a metal plaque preserves spontaneity, giving a precise reflection of the author’s temper. Etching is characterized by relief surface, which makes the imprint deep and light simultaneously. The basic strokes of this technique — short or long, straight or convoluted, or crossing with each other — express various shades of mood as well as the state of a landscape, its many dimensions, space, and air.
Andriy Levytsky sticks to the laws of classic etching technique by choice. His creative work is a continuation of the success achieved by Rembrandt and Shevchenko, and an improvement of the experience of his teachers — Yakutovych, Derehus, and Chebykin. Levytsky’s work gives us the evidence that the intaglio technique offers unlimited opportunities for a contemporary self-expression, and that skillful technique is imperative for creating modern works of art.
The artist has been using the etching technique for many years, bewitched by its wide range of opportunities and the special qualities of the texture that metal leaves on paper. The works presented at the exhibition are printed from plaques of copper — noble, plastic, and delicate material. It is interesting that the author never makes preliminary sketches: the image grows immediately on copper, subject to capricious imagination and spontaneous movement of hand.
Levytsky avoids creating series, which is often characteristic for graphics. He strives to make every composition a complete self-valuable artistic image. His graphics, being saturated with texture, convey the most diverse traits: transparency and density, energy and softness, spaciousness and decorative flatness, light and shadows...
The completeness of Levytsky’s works reminds one that jewelry art was at the source of etching. His art in its polished forms gives the spectators a lot of room for guess and imagination.
