Title: Melting…
Location: Bacău, Romania
Artist: Roy Valk aka Karski (Netherlands)
For: ZidArt
Year: 2023
Photo credits: ZidArt
“Not even the busiest people walking by “Melting…”, Roy Valk’s first mural in Romania, could fail to notice its beauty. Majestic and impressive, it commands everyone’s attention through its bold chromatic choices, daring contrasts of both color and texture, alluring fluid shapes, and an impeccable rendition of photorealistic elements. At first glance, it is aestethic delight at its best: pure, immersive visual pleasure, equally compelling for all tastes and levels of initiation into visual art.
As the artist himself explains, beauty and aesthetic qualities play a primary role in his mural style, but once the goal of capturing the viewer’s attention has been accomplished, new layers of meaning start to unfold. Engaging the audience on a level of innocent enjoyment creates a feeling of safety, allowing for biases and mental barriers to be bypassed in order to deliver a message straight to one’s heart, while gently inviting them to reflect on an underlying theme that is of paramount importance to humanity.
The visual depth of this artwork is complemented by its profound meaning. With an ascending composition topped by what is perhaps its most captivating element, a magnificent bird ennobled by vividly colored plumage, the painting evokes a delicate feeling of sublime. A symbol of freedom and high aspirations, as well as biodiversity, the main character of this story is inextricably connected to its environment, the colorful globes beneath it, that seem to illustrate some type of biospheres. As their colors and textures blend symbiotically, the bird seems to, at the same time, have evolved from and also still be a part of this system that has propelled it to the top but is now melting away underneath it. It seems inevitable that, as its support system dissolves, the bird itself will melt back into the elements it once came from.
In the words of the artist, the message is clear and simple: “In this artwork I combine natural elements with melting circles since the world is getting warmer and warmer… We need to do something!””
ZidArt
USEFUL LINKS:
Karski Roy Valk in this blog | Website | Instagram | Facebook fan page
Categories: OperArt, Street art
Barbara Picci 