ART
Beyond Temptation and Interest: The Intrinsic Reality
of Olga Vishnevetskaya's Neutral Paintings
Olga Vishnevetskaya
Artist
Succulence and beauty in paintings can be considered as compliments to the world, while neutrality comes at a high price. This neutrality is not attained when an artist discovers through trial and error the best techniques and squeezes the last juices out of them, becomes dry, objective and predictable, but when merging with time. In this sense, every artwork, melody or poem is a form of altering time, which, like the very matter of life, is neutral.

Olga Vishnevetskaya’s paintings do not flirt, neither aim to be tempting nor interesting, rather they intend to direct the viewer towards the artwork's intrinsic reality. One can notice the author’s clear inclination towards metaphorics, which is drawn from everywhere, both left and right: from archaics, from the dictionary, professional language, from fragments of phrases, art history and things alike. In terms of genre, it is pastoral abstraction, devoid of plot and perspective, there are no bright colors or expressive brushstrokes, the rivers do not overflow their banks, leaving no fluffy foam onto wet sand. These paintings are monotonously neutral, like desert vistas.
Whether Vishnevetskaya consciously renounces color, suppresses or limits content, restrains herself, deliberately moves away from objects of sensation, refuses to express feelings or following Wordsworth's commandment, strives to create her own taste in order to learn how to get pleasure, is probably not so important, any activity can be considered as a language, especially when we talk about the language of painting. It is a metaphysical art by definition because its very material – visual images – are metaphysical. Vishnevetskaya's paintings feature her beloved animals proliferate, ethereal and languid humans wrapped in layers to demonstrate the rigorous study of cosmic dance, eyes on the thresholds, polar creatures, floral motifs, each of them acts a unique character. Additionally, these entities are interesting in their portrayal of loneliness, as if the artist captured and separated elements from the world around her.

Olga Vishnevetskaya creates a dual identity in her works, where the space is flat, impossible to penetrate, but still filled in a certain sense. Although these enclosed paintings may appear to allude to reality at times, they are not. Excess is not their characteristic, and if you highlight a specific object on the plane or the contour of a living being and attempt to find another to correlate it with, you will probably fail. It is therefore preferable to explore life in general in connection with artistic practice. But it is probably more about psychology, and psychology as a means to talk about art may not yield the most accurate results; experience is simply impossible to articulate through words, it always turns out wrong.

It doesn’t matter who was the first to understand that dissonance is not the end of art, but exactly the opposite, that moment marked the genesis of a new era, one that exists at the level of ideas. Everything that a person is able to imagine can become an instant reality. Knowledge extends to infinity, but we see only a little. And even to grasp a fraction of what's possible, imagination is required.

11.05.2022
Clara Smith