Room 1989

Oleg Holosiy made this oil on canvas painting, "Room," and it feels like he was really working something out. There's a lot of scratching and layering going on, with these ghostly figures emerging from a textured ochre ground. The paint isn’t too thick, more like stains and rubbed surfaces. Look at how the white paint is dragged and blurred, giving the figures a kind of spectral presence. It's like they are caught between dimensions, or maybe just trapped in a bad dream. The way the paint is worked gives a sense of the artist grappling with something, maybe existential, maybe personal. Holosiy tragically died very young, and this image feels like he's in conversation with artists like Francis Bacon, who also explored the darker sides of human existence with raw, expressive brushwork. Ultimately, what this room contains, and what it means, is up for grabs.