Oil painting is a trend in fine arts in which artists use pure oil or its impurities as the main material for creating paintings. Their painting differs from the methods of the usual oil paints - there is no exact unified technique, it is different for each artist. The material dries slowly, which allows you to refine the original version, deepening the shades of oil and revitalizing the picture. Oil from different fields differs in density, color, density and composition.
The genre explores the ability of artists to create paintings in unconventional ways and depart from canon. The themes in the genre are as diverse as in art in general: exposing consumerism, landscape themes, performance and political art. Today, oil has become the object of creativity of various artists with their own approach to the creation of beauty. It is difficult to determine who was the first to use oil as a material for artwork. It has inspired artists from different countries and appeared at different times and in different forms. However, these were isolated cases rather than systematic use.
Artists were not in a hurry to transfer the oil itself onto canvas because of the difficulties of extracting the necessary oil grades and special tools required to create durable paintings. Therefore, they used admixtures of the material, often diluting the resulting mixture with dyes and pigments, and passed off bitumen and oil waste as pure oil.
Russian artist Timur Novikov was one of the first to use non-obvious materials in applied art. He turned to the subject of oil in its present form in 1991 with a black square piece of polyethylene titled "Oil Spill in the Persian Gulf".
Kader Attia, a French artist of Algerian origin, presented the artwork "Oil and Sugar" in 2007, a 4.5 minute long video where oil is poured onto neatly stacked sugar cubes. This performance does not directly criticize the extractive companies, but rather criticizes the two driving forces of colonialism - sugar cane and oil - that "dance" during enslavement and destruction.
MONK — is the only artist in Russia who uses pure oil as the main tool and creates space for interpreting the meanings of his work. The artist leaves pure oil in its pristine state, without adding dyes and pigments. At the expense of this, the paintings stand out for their saturation and naturalness. He keeps his identity a secret, instead inviting viewers to take a closer look at his artwork.
Exclusively for the international festival "Traditions and Modernity" in Gostiny Dvor, MONK presented artwork for the first time and literally became an art performance himself - he was painting a new picture in a special cube at the time of the festival. This is how MONK became a unique public face in the development of the genre. During the performance, the artist did not answer questions, focusing on his artwork, and the audience witnessed an oil performance. It can be assumed that the demand for such spectacles will continue to grow, which means that new appearances of masters in unexpected formats are not far off.
Oilism is a new and still unknown trend in art, which has yet to earn true recognition. This genre will continue to develop and oil will continue to influence contemporary art, including in Russia, expanding the possibilities of using the material in new social and cultural contexts.
MONK "Eternity", 2023 140 cm * 90 cm Oil
It remains only to get ready for new performances and follow the development of the genre.
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