Information about the work
The canvas Full Moon [Povnya] (oil on canvas, 1987; acquired by the Sumy Regional Art Museum in 1991) belongs to the period of the so-called “plastic monochrome.” The painting depicts an indeterminate interior filled with numerous shelves and ambiguous objects illuminated by moonlight. The mystery of the unknown, along with movement and inner tension, seems to push a yellow-and-black full moon disk outward from deep within the canvas. Exploring the artist’s oeuvre, Viktoria Burlaka aptly dubbed the artist an “avatar of night vision.” “Holosiy’s paintings, with their blurred reality and shifting, flickering images, are the fruit of such blind night vision, or the sight of a person abruptly awakened from sleep; they are the transmission of his profound, hidden meaning—his ‘inner cinema'” (Oleksandr Soloviov).
Enclosed within a square format, the composition is ruptured by diagonal bands of lunar disks—moving from dark, black in the upper left to light yellow in the lower right. The dominant yellow color, combined with black, creates an intensely charged atmosphere. The author of the canvas strives to break free beyond the boundaries of his own painting. The imagery is indistinct, rendered with broad brushstrokes and local dark tones, functioning almost as a gaze from darkness onto reality. Oleh Holosiy’s art (in Oleksandr Soloviov’s words) “possesses a hallucinatory nature and its own ‘optics.’ Images glimpsed in dreams frequently find their way onto the artist’s canvas.” According to the art critic, “the artist’s ‘inner cinema’ is the contemplation of a specific image born in the artist’s imagination on the basis of visual impressions. The creator dematerializes reality.”
The canvas conveys the impression of an emotionally charged, nearly dramatic vision executed in a loosely expressionist manner with elements of form deconstruction. The space is enclosed and constructed without a strict perspective depth. The primary elements are arranged frontally, appearing pressed against the picture plane. The central zone is filled with dynamic brushstrokes that create an effect of movement or internal conflict. The upper portion of the composition is more static, whereas the lower part is volatile.
Figurative elements are merely suggested here, revealing anthropomorphic traces: a silhouette resembling a human figure, alongside fragments akin to hands or faces. These images remain unspecific, dissolving into the overarching painterly flow. Such ambiguity of form heightens the sense of alienation or inner fracturing. The color palette is restrained, dominated by deep, muted tones. Yellow acts as an accent, slicing through the composition like a flash of light or a sign of tension. The contrast between the dark background and the vibrant yellow patches generates a dramatic chiaroscuro interplay. The painterly surface appears rough, and the texture is impulsive. One senses a rapid, emotional manner of painting where the transmission of a state of mind takes precedence over detail.
The work evokes associations with internal conflict, anxiety, or even existential solitude. The dark palette and deformed imagery can symbolize psychological tension or the drama of human existence, while the yellow elements may be interpreted as a glimmer of consciousness, light, or hope amidst the darkness. The piece leans toward Expressionism infused with features of abstract painting. Realistic forms are secondary here to the emotional impulse, gesture, and color as vehicles for expressing a complex internal state. “For Holosiy—a traveler, nomad, and claustrophobe—the process and the flow were paramount. Hence the metamorphoses of living through his own innermost world, the drive to perpetually don new painterly garments while remaining invariably recognizable” (Oleksandr Soloviov).