SERHIY HAI | Expressing the core of life itself

Expressing the core of life itself
By Serhiy Hai

“I try to listen carefully to the materials; I approach them quietly and respectfully. I trust the material; it makes the whole difference in my work. I have always cared about shape construction.
A figure is an architectural shape in itself. It can be split into separate building blocks. An impressive mass of such geometrical elements gradually groups with a smaller mass, producing a complex overall shape of a coherent work.”
-Serhiy Hai

Born in the late 1950s in Lviv, Ukraine, Serhiy Hai gained an important regional reputation and has exhibited extensively in Ukraine, Eastern, and Western Europe, and the United States. His work is in museum collections in Ukraine and in many private collections across Europe and the United States.

Serhiy Hai is a member of the National Artist’s Union of Ukraine and of “The BG-ART” Association. During the past years, Hai’s work has been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions, including at the XIX Florence Biennale, and was awarded internationally by the jury in the painting category.

THE CULTURE OF SENSUALITY IN SERHIY HAI’S PAINTINGS

Each new exhibition of works by a Lviv native, Serghiy Hai, draws its visitors out of their boring routines like an esthetic whip and forces them into active immersion in the coloristic ambiance of his paintings.
Since his youth, the artist of vibrant compositions has been an avid fan of Modigliani’s plastique and the masculine power of Picasso’s works.
However, Hai’s expressionism is best compared with the insanely-unfettered energy of Haim Sutin.
Hai works typically within the confines of two concepts: the nude female (rarely male) model and the Horse Rider, which is enough for the painter to address his coloristic tasks. The conceptual minimalism, or should we even say – scarcity, abundantly compensates with the boundlessness of coloristic decisions, always fresh, unexpected, and compelling.
Hai’s nude paintings are impersonal; they are no portraits. The faces do not represent appearances; these are rather masks, sometimes even colorful stains. The author explains this artistic technique with the need to create an image sign. For example, the painter cites perfect images from ancient Greece devoid of individual traits.
Hai quotes King Solomon’s words from the Book of Psalms “I looked at her but did not see her face.”
The key here is the perfection of the body against which the face domination fades away while the overall essence of a woman mingles into a breathtaking object of contemplation and appetence. Similar nudity paintings can be found in the legacy of Egon Schiele and Auguste Rodin. Hai traced the same plastic solution in the works of Odessa painter Yuriy Yegorov. Hai says: “It is vital to convey the plastique, the line, certain centers of tension, rhythm, and shape.”
The plastique and coherence of Hai’s nu images evoke analogies with the perfect pantomime of ballet pas. The nude body, which Hai depicts in provocatively explicit poses and angles, perfectly rhymes with compositions created by sex addict Egon Schiele. However, in Hai’s works, eroticism does not evolve into pornographic straightforwardness, which is so pertinent to the Austrian avant-garde.

– Andrew Horodysky, Art Advisor

Expressing the core of life itself

In beginning the discussion about Sergiy Hai, it is essential to identify two critical factors.
Firstly, it is undeniable that the artist’s works belong to an endless, varied, exceptional artistic range of post-modernism awakened by reflection obtained from the world’s perspective and in the use of chosen techniques.
Secondly, Sergiy Hai’s art clearly illustrates the character of modern art in the direct, natural connection of the canvas with the unique inner world of the author.
Also, the ability to actively form and define his individuality by embodying the inspired work with part of his inner energy, in the end, defines the author’s place on the scale of values in the contemporary art world.
In the figurative language of Sergiy Hai, in which he operates virtuously due to his vast experience, we see the organic fusion of impressionism and primitivism, which simultaneously manifest a clear belonging with old traditions of Ukrainian fine-art folklore. Simultaneously this way of reflection and presentation of themes chosen by the artist reaches wider layers acquired through the ages of mankind, allowing the artist to go beyond the boundaries of Ukraine.
While observing the works of Sergiy Hai, we feel a constant tense emotional state, concentration of energy, and the explosive reaction of the author to his surroundings. All his compositions are representative and figurative. However, in no way do they copy reality but rather transform it into the original, unique vision of the author, fixing a specific state of the author provoked by captivated emotional perception of his existence.

The artist does not strive for a realistic recreation of objects, elements of architecture, concrete attributes of people, animals, natural colors, and forms, but we fully feel their presence as if enchanted. The secret of this effect lies in that the artist, through his works, returns us to childhood and those first unforgettable impressions we obtain from perceiving our surroundings and the first attempts to put these impressions on paper. At the same time, we certainly feel the presence of a certain “time warp” that unites our associations with ancient primordial cultures.

Sergiy Hai does not aspire to “pre-program” external effects. His questions are resolved on different planes. One gets an impression that the artist constantly and insistently reaches into the depths of his own soul and ours as well, in the secret comers of the human psyche rooted in somewhat naive and unfathomable childhood images.
The artist seldom turns to multi-shape compositions. The heroes of his works are purposefully brought close to the observer – the figures and faces appear to not fit into the format of the painting, creating the desire to actively communicate with them.
At first glance, the artist does not execute anything special, presenting absolutely ordinary, simple subjects. In fact, they acquire unusual depths and strength of associated influences. The same human forms, actions, faces, and communication between two people or a person with an animal – are favorite motifs.

The calculated role of every chosen attribute or element in the surrounding, which, so to speak, defines the environment, restrained and always purposefully applied color, bold and assured tonal confrontation, maximal contour clarity, planes, and lines – all subordinate to the materialization of certain emotions, which attract one’s sincerity and candidness.
Breaking visual connections with reality, the artist in his works avoids concretization and utilizes the method of an unfinished story, leaving something unsaid. This approach provokes a unique, somewhat secret, symbolic-philosophic, individual way for the observer to interpret the canvas.
The painter’s conscious intention is to evoke an ambiguous reaction; the content of the work does not open itself immediately but only through the process of activation of our own sensual abilities and imagination.
Nevertheless, using purposeful accents, tonal contrast, one of the elementary instruments of expression, deep shadows, and active flashes of light, the artist’s canvas never loses characteristic lightness, a unique feeling of free improvisation, the virtuosity of stroke, fresh palate. Essentially, he utilizes solid geometric or irregular forms, skillfully using dynamic spreading, a mixture of paint, and internal movement of factored surfaces.
Very often, the play of colors becomes absolutely relative and far from the real color of a definite subject, the body of a person or animal. But in any case, one feels the rational, balanced use of saturated accents of color and calculated infusion in the deepness of the practically mono-tonal color surface.

The artist strives to maximally enrich every inch of canvas to make it pulse with life, live its internal rhythm, able to summon an enriched heavy flow of associations. His works do not close into themselves, demonstrate clear tendencies to interact with surroundings, and reflect philosophically- authorized continuation of processes that take place in the author.
Evaluating Sergiy Hai’s works, one can conclude that the most important moving force in his creativity is his eternal striving for sincerity. It in itself entices and is perceived as a spontaneous protest against hypocrisy, deceit, and Pharisee-ism, which engulf our society, relationships, and feelings. Following his own creative road and achieving a significant level of mastery, the artist is presently not content and continues to search courageously, to acquire confidence and direction.
– Orest Holubets, Ph.D. Fine Art

See the full article in Art Market Magazine Issue #78