Iuliia Lermak

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

My art is the pause between words that were never spoken. Each work is an attempt to touch what does not exist. These are not images. They are silences. Spaces without pressure. Eternity without walls. Places where someone was meant to be—but never arrived. My characters do not live within the frame—they have vanished. Dissolved. Only the silhouette remains. The absence.

My subjects exist outside of time. My works are not stories, but states: moods, vibrations, the echo of fragile sensations. The body is not an object—it is space.

I photograph the nude not as a symbol of desire, but as a statue forgotten by the sun. I do not capture narrative—I capture the residue of feeling. I photograph fire that does not burn, water where no one drowns, an embrace meant for no one. My images are cracks between silence and pain.

This is not about beauty—it’s about how beauty breaks. How form splits from within. How fire sounds inside water. How tenderness becomes a trace of loss. These images don’t explain. They are like windows no one has looked through. They are nostalgia for something that never was.

Nature, for me, is not a background. It is a companion. Its silence is not emptiness—but presence. I don’t stand apart—I breathe beside it.

Surrealism is not a style. It is an admission that we no longer know what is real—what we see or what we feel. What’s primary: matter or spirit?

My images hold no movement—only suspended quiet. I do not impose meaning. I leave room for it. Let the viewer search. Let it tremble. Let it freeze. I do not control the perception of what I create.

This is my art. Still. Absent. Listening.