YULIA SHORTY

Her work is concerned with capturing what lies beneath the surface - gazes, expressions, and character. Through precise painting and close attention to detail, she searches for the moment when something internal is revealed through the figure.

Her process combines working from photographs with free intuition. She describes oil painting as a layered action - building, breaking down, and rebuilding - similar to digital work, but with physical presence.

Shorty is a self-taught artist who began her path in the digital world through design and image-making, before transitioning to painting. In 2016 she began working on large-scale canvas, shortly before presenting her first exhibition at Kuli Alma.

Painting is, for her, a space of inner gathering and disconnection from the world. In recent years she has been seeking to destabilize her realist language and move toward something freer and more psychedelic, exploring the tension between chaos and control.

Shorty's work connects to OTTO gallery's ethos through its engagement with the tension between control and intuition, and between material precision and emotional inquiry.