Cheval Michael - Style

Style

Cheval's art is notable for its power, technical brilliance, subtlety, grandeur and the originality of its concepts.

Cheval compares his paintings to a puzzle whose code needs to be discovered; yet there may be more than one solution to the riddle and he invites the audience to provide their own unique interpretations of his art, through which new ideas and a higher level of understanding of the work is attained. Cheval says: “ The spectator should have aspiration to understand the world I present, and thereby expand his horizons and his consciousness. I'm always happy when I see that a viewer understands me, when they have the desire to play my game”(7) (8).

Amongst the influences on Cheval's art are the Russian artists of the 19th-20th centuries, such as Pavel Fedotov, Vasily Perov, Vasily Surikov and Viktor Vasnetsov, the artists of the Italian Renaissance painting and the Dutch artists of the 16th-17th centuries, in particular Vermeer and Gerard ter Borch.

The greatest influence that helped him define his style came from the two Surrealists of the 20th century, Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, although he sees his style as distinct from surrealism, describing it as Absurdism. According to his definition, absurdism is an inverted side of reality, a reverse side of logic that does not emerge from the dreams of surrealists or the realm of the subconsciousness. Rather, it is a game of imagination, where all ties are carefully chosen to construct a literary plot. Cheval says: "Absurdity, like any other genre, has its own rules. But it implies everything that is outlying of common rules and boundaries. "Absurdism" is an attempt to understand our life the way it truly is. Without propaganda, ideology, politics, and imposed tastes. Life in its pure state is beautiful, full of logic and meaning. But combined with the above, it is absurd, illogical. The majority of people became accustomed to such life and they do not notice this. That is why it is useful, once in a while, to turn everything upside down, in order to wake them."

Cheval identifies an aesthetic connection between his style and Samuel Beckett's and Eugène Ionesco’s Theatre of the Absurd (Theater of the absurd), as well as Peter Greenaway’s, Luis Buñuel's and Tarsem Singh's films.

He cites his passion for literature and poetry as contributing to the visual vocabulary and symbolism of his art. He also describes the experience he had gained from being a musician and a writer as an essential factor in the realization of his goals in the painting field.