True Flag, 99, 2015

Maya Hayuk  

The American Maya Hayuk (1969) is an international successful artist. She studied at the Massachussetts College of Art in Boston, but also spent time in Toronto Canada, Odessa in the Oekrain and Skowhegan in Main during her studies.

Nowadays she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.Not many artist are active in so many aspects of art as she is: Maya Hayuk is a painter, muralist, photographer, designer, curator and author. She is most famous for her brightly coloured murals, in which she uses geometry, symmetry and different optical effects. She is inspired by the Eastern-European folkloristic art, pop art and op art.

A while back Maya Hayuk made a mural on the famous Bowery Wall in Manhattan, a very prestigious project where she was preceded by great names like Keith Haring and Shepard Fairey. Hayuks large paintings, installations and smaller work on paper have been on display on numerous exhibitions, focussing mainly on North and South America, but also the Bonnefantemuseum in Maastricht dedicated an exhibition to her work in 2012, called 'Heavy Lights'. Maya Hayuk plays an important role in contemporary art.

"Maya Hayuk's work has to be felt, not studied. It's an experience that activates mirror neurones “ which allow us to grasp other people's minds, not through the mediation of a conceptual reasoning, but rather through direct stimulation".

The emphatic emotion of these abstract paintings is fed by a multitude of hidden references that make them particularly pertinent today. Might it be Ukrainian folk motifs, a touch of Mandala, a cosmos, or the image of a psychedelic movie ... pop culture references are infused to the practice of contemporary painting.

This is abstract painting, often monumental, always full of bright colours, with symmetrical and elaborate compositions. Maya Hayuk thrills our psyches with colours, as music does with sounds.

If Maya's work is so stimulating, it's because beyond the explicit visual references that can be found, it is the work of a highly committed artist in the fields of art and music, as her biography testifies.

These numerous connections bring together a multitude of fragrances that permeate her work and anchor it successfully in its time."

- Raphael Cruyt