Oleksiy Say “New Landscape”

Oleksiy Say is an artist who combines the art of new media with traditional pictorial forms. He creates his works using Excel office software. This time consuming technique has already become a brand hallmark of his work.

Globalisation, industrialization, and relation between general and individual are the artist’s main research topics. One of the most famous Say’s series named "New Landscape" is dedicated to the ongoing construction of the modern urban world. In the works of this project, the artist captures the outline of the city as a construction site, which today the majority of of megalopolises have become, including our country. Moreover, in the local context besides the intrusiveness of new construction by itself there is an added problem of it often being unauthorized, destructive to historical buildings and existing urban architectural ensemble.

The appearance of new architecture, massive and devoid of personality, puts pressure on the viewer as well as a huge amount of different information, advertising, falling daily on us. Underlining this property of "a new reality", Say uses the same means which the media and social networks operate with: bright, sometimes flashy colors, a lot of symbols, smiles, layers superimposed on one another. Thus the "New Landscape" through the eyes of Oleksiy Say appears before the audience, fictional and realistic at the same time.

Art dealer Igor Abramovich