Yuriy Smolskyi is an artist who avoids monotony in the stylistic expression of his painting or graphics, instead thinking in terms of a holistic structure. In this approach to seeking meaning, even the smallest details of composition or the supporting image of plastic form are important. Therefore, the individuality of this artist reveals itself in the discipline of selecting expressive means, which secure the syncretism of thought and emotion.

The carrier of the humanistic value imperative in Yuriy Smolskyi's work is the parable that grows out of the soil of metaphysics. The artist constructs a conditional reality with symbolic identifiers of the moral and ethical conflicts of contemporary life. Through sharp grotesque juxtapositions of symbolic and abstract forms, the artist builds a network of meanings that mark the philosophical dimensions of processes of dehumanization in the stratified historical Time.

The talent of a "director" of socio-anthropological scenes, with which Yuriy Smolskyi marks the issue of Man in Time, is enhanced by the range of technical-expressive means at the artist’s disposal. It is his ability to find the right measure of concentration of metaphysical substrate through the system of lines, rhythm, and plasticity that determines the artistic power of his works, the convincingness in visualizing the most complex concepts and states of existence. The ordinary pencil lead has become for Yuriy Smolskyi the tool through which he carries out the procedure of aesthetic diagnosis of Life in its most complex entanglements of the Spirit—creative and destructive—within the overall balance of human values.

Roman Yatsiv