Max Vityk. The Outcrops

Max Vityk, a Ukrainian-born American artist and geologist, has produced an ambitious series of paintings entitled The Outcrops inspired by those areas of the earth's bedrock exposed through erosion and man-made roads. In The Outcrops, Vityk charts the entire geological timescale of earth using a foam and enamel paint technique, viscerally denoting the earth's evolution over millions of years. This combination of materials creates textures amazingly reminiscent of living rock formations, oozing and flowing on large-scale canvases. As a member of the new generation of abstractionists, Vityk brings a thematic focus to the scale and layered paint of the New York School painters. His color system creates a symbolic layering of geological time, from the white of the ice ages, to the blues and greens of life emerging from the seas and moving onto land. Vityk's geological abstract expressionism appears, at first glance, to be totally non-representational; in fact, The Outcrops manages to recreate the most concrete of subjects—the very ground under our feet.