As you can see, it ispossible to find untrodden paths. Sometimes,  it is  necessary to splash paint on the map of an everydayroutine, and then, take a look of what you have just made th yourhands, as if you were a god. Or, maybe not with their hands, becausethe people in Yuriy Solomko's paintings use other instruments to owtheir love to their Homeland. Your Home-id is the place where you feelhappy, and from love it gets better everywhere: from Moscow tooutskirts, from Kyiv to New York. There is id of landscape"domestication," which sho oughout the palimpsest of the troubling stcgeography. By stretching your arms you ri 1 up in the center of theearth, as if under jrms of your beloved.

But what moves the stars and sun? Right, there is an absence of'"contraceptive" logic in pouring out creative energy. That's whyeverything in Solomko's corporal cartography seems very close... moreprecisely, tight. Arms, legs, continents. The face is hidden under themap of the Near East, as if under a paranja. What was before? The wholebody - birthmarks and freckles. As a poet would say-little Africa,little Europe, little America, I big eyes of my seventeen-year-olddaughter. In other worlds, life is harder. There is a differencebetween tender instruments of love a hardened stereotypes. Solomkoexpresses love to geography by disturbing "continent" masses ofmeanings, and by laying a young, unknown body on a soft,transcontinental bed. Yes, friendship knows no boundaries. Yes, coitus,finally. However, it is not about totalitarian metaphysics. It is aboutbodies in love that do not slide down the globe! And if they fall, it'sinto the abyss of passion and ocean of ecstasy, and not into insipidgeopolitics. Indeed, the value of certain meta-geography isdetermined  by ideological  relevance towardspolitical discourse. But, is it worth getting distracted? The exhaustedmetaphor is resting.

Ihor Bondar-Tereschenko