Figurative
The emotional vulnerability of the Warriors of Light fuels their plea for change; it is something akin to going into battle naked... a certain nakedness protected only by an un- faltering conviction of ideals. Vityk’s work feels less like a personal enterprise and more like an ode, or an act of adulation to the spirit of change — a spirit plagued by credulous hope for something better... something happier.
Nahla Samaha, freelance writer and art editor based in Cairo, Egypt
“Painting for me feels like a meditation. I often paint with my eyes closed - to let my subconscious mind in control”. - Max Vityk
Max Vityk’s oeuvre redefined the possibilities of life, in a unique way. His amazing painted works use vibrant colours and forms, which are blended together in a sculptured way telling mysterious stories. Max Vityk’s large canvases seduce us into a marvellous vision, which slides endlessly through your subconscious.
In my journey through the Duindigt forest I often encounter different wonders of the world - creatures from distant Western and Eastern lands with bird heads and horse legs, Bardo Angels riding on storks, smiling Birds and giant Silver Dutch Tulips guarded by the Revolution Soldiers from Kyiv. They just happening and coming from nowhere - like dreams…
"The Fragments series - is a creative, sometimes fanciful burst of the author’s artistic fantasy – a series of accidental elements, auxiliary images, born as he was working on the main painting, later completed and shaped through combination of lines, contours, colors, in fact on pieces of cardboard. Those images grow independent, giving rise to new, unexpected associations...” from Tauvers International Gallery press release.
"The FL series was inspired by the surreal emotions of the iconic bonfires that guarded EuroMaidan in Kyiv - the wild flames glowing every night against the fetid, black smoke of burning tires- at times the sights took on a majestic power and beauty because those bright fires helped transform the country, and blossomed into a new freedom”. Peter Tauvers, Tauvers International Gallery
“While creating “Hallucinations in Zasupoyivka”, Max Vityk used a free-flowing paint with stiff consistency that turned to nearly mirror spots when touching the canvas, like quiet but deep lake waters. The expressive active colors of his paintings seem to require from the author an even higher concentration in clearly defined forms, like archaic. Those lines, which seem cut in rock, emphasize a color’s radiance, adding a certain function to it in a conditionally defined (and thus not immediately truly perceived) figure.
The “Transformers” series was created and first presented in the Lviv Palace of Arts in 2010. It was created seemingly by accident, as is often the case in history. There were no more large canvases in the studio, and only small canvas-stretchers were left. Yet, inspiration cannot wait; it is eager to burst out, so the artist used what he had.
Most of the canvases from the Sin City series were pained in 2007-2008 in Vityk's Kyiv studio and first exhibited in 2008 by Kyiv's Bottega gallery. “Like the emotional tone of American abstract expressionism, Vityk’s expressionism in the Sin City series is full of drama.
