Victor Cuzmenco refers to his art as Ontologic Painting, which comprises the idea of fundamental philosophical questions studied by ontology. Through his art for the last thirty years, he has explored and expressed spiritual rather than sensational perception, “being” rather than simply existing. Victor visualizes such broad philosophic categories as space, time, structure, movement, spiritual states, and interactions among them in our constantly changing dynamic world.
Just as eternal philosophical questions have no one definite answer, ontologic paintings have no definite plot or narrative. They are free from material perception, which moves viewers away from every day routine focusing on spiritual sensations and experiences.
Ontologic Painting is characterized by three main principles. First, it depicts simple geometrical shapes like lines, squares, circles, irregular forms, which are associated with essential and generalized categories. Second, Victor abundantly uses such mixed natural media as sand, earth, clay, grated shell limestone, and wood calling them primary ontologic substances taken directly from nature with no chemical processing. Apart from it, the artist introduces powders of bronze and aluminium, spray paints and gold leaf. He also applies oil and acrylic paints with thick impasto and bold strokes to emphasize their viscosity, fluidity and texture. The mix of textures and volumetric elements creates the impression of 3D paintings on flat canvases. Third, Victor applies mainly primary colors in vivid and contrast spots of blue, red and yellow. The combinations of monochromatic natural tones and vibrant colors bring various associations, from confrontation to dialogue.
Victor embodies his ideas by means of abstract and sometimes symbolic shapes referred as Perceptual Objects. Rather often one can hardly distinguish between top and bottom, left and right side of a painting. Created compositions have a broad sense e.g., the images of opposition, overcoming, process and the like are perceived in general as categories of being. Even though objects appear as real life entities, they refer to metaphorical meanings. Thus, the compositions are open for multiple interpretations. One can see macro world of infinitely large universes, structures or galaxies, while the other may associate the depicted images with micro world of cells, atoms, nuclei, photons and microelements. The artworks may show imaginary parallel worlds and blended realms interacting with one another. Oftentimes the artist creates a series of two to six artworks for one idea discovering the nuances of the main sense.
Victor strongly believes that an artist should be an innovator. He always finds inspiration in scientific breakthroughs, hidden philosophic thoughts, architecture, literature, technologies and new discoveries. An idea for an artwork usually comes out of the blue, quite often from a fleeting impression. Sometimes, a physiological or tactile sensation fuels the concept as well.