OIL & WATER — TRANSGRESSION
In the “Oil and Water” series, painting ceases to be an image and becomes an event.
Each work emerges from the interaction of two incompatible materials. Oil paint, concealed beneath a layer of dried water-based polymer paint, breaks through the body of the upper layer under the force of gravity and emerges onto the surface.
The artist does not so much apply the paint as initiate a process, creating the conditions for the material to act on its own. Every flow and every gravitational stroke records a struggle between the inner and the outer, the hidden and the revealed, control and autonomy.
The finished painting is therefore only the trace of an action that has already taken place. Its true meaning unfolds during the act of creation — as the paint moves, resists, breaks through, and finds its own trajectory.
“Oil and Water” continues Savchenko’s exploration begun with the “Eruptions” series (2009), in which spontaneity and the loss of control became part of the creative process. Here, the possibility of shaping the movement of the paint is combined with its autonomy.
The process does not end with the painting. During the creation of the works, the artist produces numerous video recordings, which later become independent works, generating new images, narratives, and directions of research.
In this sense, “Oil and Water” is not simply a series of paintings, but a system of transformations.
The rapid breakthrough of the paint can be read as a metaphor for elevation, liberation, and self-revelation — the movement of something internal toward the outside. It is an act of transgression in which matter moves beyond the limits of its own state, and the hidden strives to become visible.Painting here becomes a materialized moment of transition — from potential to action, from the hidden to the revealed, from control to autonomy.
Oil-and-Water
Article by Olena Grubb,
MAAB Sotheby’s Institute of Art
On the exposition in Gallery Tryptych-Art , Kyiv, 23.11.2019-06.12.2019
