Text about Maxim Piatrul by Olga Kovalenko

Maxim Piatrul

… You start to make a sculpture, you plunge into its world, and then - it is already the sculpture that makes you. Arespectators interestedin my creative immersion? Maybe they are; maybe they are not, but it does not matter to me any longer.

I am sure that it is during the moments of your total dissociation from thecontext of reality, in which you are present physically,that there comes the only correct comprehension of the Universe;there comes the only true "sight". As my experience shows, it is not my natural ocular organs or mental powers, but some universal energy that makes this "sight" possible. Such moments are the main thing in my life. It is when the process of work andperception begins, when plastic ideas and the semantic component of my works start to appear. Still, these ideas are not completely mine – these are universal ideas. My task is to reveal these ideas through form and it is where my individuality manifests.

For me, Laozi is a friend and a kindred spirit. It is in his words that I have found the confirmation ofmy conjectures concerning the Absolute True. It seems to me that I understood this world or I was predisposed to understanditin the way he teaches to fathom it.

Maxim Piatrul thinks in monumental extensional forms. This feature of his creative vision is embodied not only in his sculptural works designed for big urban spaces or natural landscapes, but also in his indoor sculptures. The artist’s language is laconic.Plastic forms are withdrawn into themselves. Their apparent simplicity is deceptive; it hides multilayered meanings and signs, "traces" of the author’s long reflections and meditative plunges intothe space of the world. Piatrul’s works have difficult semantic structures; they are concentrated formulas of a hard work of his feelings and mental powers on the way to the understanding of the essence and logic of the never-waning circulation of time and space, to the understandingof himself and his mission in this circulation.

«To live a life, leaving no trace» is the artist’s behavioral concept. The scurry and the scramble of everyday life, in which a person is included a priori, are overcome in the course of creativity. The happiness of creativelybreaking through intoanother reality and connecting to its energy is fickle and elusive. However, it eclipses everyday pleasures. In his sculptures,Piatrul tries to impress codes of the Universe, which meaning comes and goes if you have not managed to identify them on time. These are the only "traces", in his opinion, that an artist should leave.

Piatrul’s sculptural compositions live especially naturally and harmoniously in the environment. Their stay in the serenely quiet space of the Sky and the Earth givesspectators a chance to approach their inner contemplation through the contemplation of the subject form in order to try to find the Truth by getting rid of everything that is false in themselves.

As a matter of fact, the inner contemplation principle is taken by the artist as a foundation of his creative method. His inner work on each sculpture takes a long time; the plastic form ripens graduallyand finds itself in the material. It is obvious that the sculptor attaches huge importance to it. Granite or marble, wood, bronze, silumin, copper, steel –the choice of thematerial is dictated by a plastic idea, in which there is a particle of the world, in which its certain law is openedand demonstrated by the artist’s creative will. The feeling of the material, its facture and expressive possibilities allowsPiatrul to reach the harmony and completeness of form;itstrengthensthe figurative and philosophical contentsof his oeuvres.

«Being made in the context of the author’s own time, a sculpture has to guess the future or to recall the past. For someone, my past will probably become the future and it is at this very moment when we shall meet...»

Olga Kovalenko, PhD

Member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA/IAAC)

Member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM)