Contemporary art, especially in its post-modernist manifestation, can not be defined by a particular style. Contemporary art is an individual process instead. Existing within the current epoque, we can only vaguely realize what is occurring with us, our time and our emotions. The creative process does not need reflection any more. And this is remarkable. It appears that what the artist is saying is not relevant as long as the History mechanism keeps functioning. For some reason Man does not have to perceive himself as a part of the Universe any longer. It is just enough to remain a participant in the life process.

We seem to have lost the affection that just recently united artist and viewer. We live together but secretly hate each other like in a dysfunctional family. I believe the reason for this is not in the genetic decline of the talented individual but rather the unwillingness of masses to deal with the talent. Actually, it has always been the case.
Insignificance is such a convenient form of human existence.

These works belong rather to the sublime than factual. The image softness is a plastic metaphor of instability and difficulty of living. The author senses malady in the end of the century air: the old values are painfully analyzed; the new ones seem questionable and repulsive. The past appears to be a waste and a fantasy - the future lies too far ahead. The process of living becomes shaky, and vague, and filled with a feeling of loss.

The call of night is felt in these works. Sunlight - the realm of intelligence - was neglected by the German Romanticists of the 19-th century. They preferred the night time - the time filled with a different light, sensibility, poetry, and trepidation and nature spirituality.

Eduard Stranadko is a mystique and sacred figure in the context of the Ukrainian cultural landscape. His works, at least for me, is like a pass to a world of other dimensions, to a world where one can turn into a somnambulant. It is a world full of context, of delicate mysterious details.

The transformation idea lies in the basis of his creative work: one concept is readily turned into another, and with the help from a third one. This is a purely alchemic idea! The photographic image turns artistic by magic, not by hand manipulation. This is how a piece of photographic paper absorbs the artist's energy.

The artist seems to usher in a new Platinum century. He is one of those who are tired of being a "person of intellect". His work lies beyond historical and aesthetical processes enveloping the life material where reality does not have to be a stopped moment but possess a certain duration in order to preserve the motif of existential presence and disappearance.

Few are the artists capable of seeing through the fabric of being. Numbered are those who are able of letting us, the viewers to do the same. In reality the artistic talent is not something that can be manipulated, utilized or controlled one way or the other. But nevertheless under some special circumstances it can. This contradiction is generally in the basis of magic. And particularly - in the magic of imaging.

Generations of artists worked hard to eliminate boundaries in Art. They did so well that there are no boundaries now. In this infinite and easy world the artist starts to feel lost and unsure of anything except his own right to be a creator. Nowadays one has to search for one' own boundaries, for something doubtless and permanent...
 

Natalie SCARLATTI