Holding Still: Olex Wlasenko | Main Gallery Exhibition

My studio production focuses on a personal and investigative discourse surrounding drawing’s relationship to lens based media (i.e. photography, cinema) in modern culture.

I use only one tool—my index finger. I manually rub the pigment or powdered charcoal into the surface of the paper. This technique gives the most dexterity and somehow the warmth of the hand transfers to each drawing.

Inspiration is teased from the pages of history or reels of film. The images I draw from surface from the vast well-spring of historical sources. These can be vintage visual documents such as books, archives or old movies. This fascination with cinema stems from my upbringing. My father was an avid collector of Ukrainian cinema.

If earlier drawings were inspired by image banks close to home, I’ve recently turned to sources outside the personal realm. Lately, I’ve been culling from “art house” cinema from Italy, France and Sweden.

I’m interested in the “moment” when the dramatic structure of the movie plot changes in an instant. As with movie stills, my drawings are free-standing islands with a myriad of possible interpretations and interconnections.

I’m fascinated by the elasticity of film and have recently become interested in extending or elongating discrete moments in film. Sequences that unfurl through cinematic time and space become transformative and tangible as charcoal drawings.