Choice 2004

Viktor Lyapkalo made Choice, an oil painting, at an unknown date. What strikes me about this piece is the feeling of the artist really enjoying the act of painting, like, they weren’t trying to capture some perfect likeness but were more into the materiality of the paint itself. And what a material! The brushstrokes are so visible, chunky even, especially in the background, they’re really laying it on thick. There’s a real sense of process here, the making of the artwork feels so present. Take a look at the way the light hits the model’s left leg, you can almost see the swirl of the brush that created that highlight. And the colors! The subtle pinks and yellows in the skin tones, mixed with earthy browns and reds, they almost vibrate on the canvas. Lyapkalo reminds me a little of Lucian Freud, in his unflinching gaze and his ability to find beauty in the everyday, but in both, there’s a sense that the painting is more than just a picture, it's an experience. It embraces a little mess, and a little ambiguity. It's art as conversation, not as a final statement.