Ukraine — France

Marseille — He has been living here for five years. Everything in this room — the host, the Ukrainian symbols, the artist’s paintings, and even his artistic pseudonym — reminds one of Ukraine.

“My pseudonym emphasizes my nationality,” Victor Orly said. “Like most Ukrainians, I like the legend about Cossack Hryhorii Orlyk, after whom a small town near Paris was allegedly named.” Orly’s studio is flooded with bright colors — his vivid pictures hang close to each other and stand in accurate rows along the walls. It also contains an album with the photos of paintings that are now exhibited as parts of collections in France, Italy, Holland, Ukraine, and Poland. The richness of themes and stylistic explorations is quite impressive: still lifes, landscapes, abstract art, romantic, and symbolic figurative art.

A kind of magic is present in the master’s works. They organically merge Ukrainian traditional art and world art. In the series of decorative works “Marseille” the cityscapes of the modern port city get an unexpected framing — Ukrainian and ancient Trypillian ornaments. Combined with Provencal symbols and images, they are interpreted as marks of the united world culture that organically merges the past and the present. “The artist has paved a miraculous bridge between his native Ukraine and Provence,” reported the French newspaper Le Provence after Orly’s first solo exhibit in France.

Orly’s paintings depict a world filled with poetry in which time and space, ideas and feelings, memoirs, dreams, and fancies interlace. For example, in the series “Aquarium” the audience discovers a wonderful underwater world full of emotions. Roses and mallows blossom in this mysterious marine world, and the feelings of the Neptune’s kingdom residents burst in bouquets of field flowers, whereas fishes go around an everlasting beautiful waltz.

Flying fish, guardian angels, and guard beasts, cat the philosopher and king fish, bouquet city, and singing moon, a pregnant woman and eternal vagabonds are characters of Orly’s art space and represent his art conception — to depict the beauty of man and surroundings, while seeking harmony, perfection, and love.

A nature lover and romanticist by nature, Orly often paints still lifes and landscapes. His pictures bring to life mountains, seas, flowers, subtle ornaments of stones, and Provencal landscapes. The bright and polyphonic color palette is the source of the artist’s inspiration and opens a broad space for creative work. His still lifes and landscape works are light and bright paintings that radiate warmth and love. At the same time, these are philosophic works that evoke numerous allusions and reminiscences. Separate details transform into bright metaphors.

The master’s paintings are full of unexpected ideas. His contemporary-style works are especially notable for non-standard artistic solutions. Using historical retrospectives, the artist reminds the 20th-century audience of the mankind’s key achievements in the spheres of technology and culture, thereby prompting it to ponder universal human values, because an individual human life lies at the heart of every work. The use of cinematographic elements, photographic and sculptural methods, unexpected combinations of details, and an original color palette underline the versatility of his artistic space and make his works especially impressive.

In the past five years Orly has participated in over 30 exhibits, and he will, no doubt, implement many more projects, because he combines talent with tireless energy and creative explorations.