Total abstraction is by definition the complete lack of subject matter. Max Vityk’s new series of sculptural paintings, Outcrops,  appear to be completely non-representational, yet are based on the most concrete of subjects—the Earth’s geological formations. For the contemporary viewer, the Outcrops may serve a meditative or decorative agenda or may inspire rhythmic movement like bodies buoyed on waves. Others may find a spiritual or environmental message in the paintings, but these will be individual inspirations because the artist demurs when asked to clarify his meaning.

 

Geologist by training, Vityk will explain how, long fascinated by the intricate textures and colors of rock, he began to create “Lava Flows” in 2013, the first of the Outcrops series. Named by geologists to describe an exposed section of bedrock on the Earth’s surface, outcrops are invaluable to scientists as they reveal hundreds, thousands and even millions and billions of years of geologic evolution. Outcrops become visible through the slow process of erosion, movement along fault lines, or sudden display brought about by manmade road cuts. Experimenting with foam and enamels, Vityk has developed a technique--durable but surprisingly light weight--that creates textures amazingly reminiscent of living rock formations. These textures ooze and flow, suspended on large-scale canvases as if at any moment they may succumb to the forces of gravity and drip from the wall. 

 

The colors, combined with the craggy, undulating paint, speak to long-buried layers of prehistoric earth and, at the same time, to brilliant minerals too fantastical to be earth-bound. In his chosen palette for this series, Vityk creates a symbolic layering of geologic time. White refers to the ice ages, blue to ancient oceans, red to volcanic activity. The transition from blue to green depicts life emerging from the seas and moving on to land. Yellow is the Earth’s vital source of energy and symbolizes the formation of the solar system, as well as layers of sandstone sediments.

 

Vityk’s Outcrops layer young rock deposits on top of older rock, just as they occur in nature. Beginning with Hadean time (four billion years ago), Vityk’s Outcrops accurately show reds and yellows predominating. In the painting The Archean Eon: 3.8 – 2.5 billion years ago Vityk has created the oxidized ochre reds, browns and yellows of the period in swelling layers rising six and a half feet. During the middle geologic period—Proterozoic and early Paleozoic—blues predominate, and in later periods, greens. And among all these ages, splashes of white correspond to mass extinctions caused by major ice ages. Awed by the vast age of our Earth’s core, we can also be swept away by Vityk’s dancing lines of color, all due to the magical combination of geologist’s eye and painter’s brush.