He was a master of abstract form with elements of “bodily” imprints: his works often resemble silhouettes, stencils, or scans of the body’s surface layered into a composition. His art reveals both harmony and tension between the material and the spiritual. In his approach to color and texture, one can trace postmodern motifs — powerful tactility combined with a subtle sense of image. Shuliev’s canvases are almost graphic in structure, yet painterly in technique.
The artist participated in the first informal exhibitions of the late 1980s–early 1990s, united by the theme Defloration — the breaking of Soviet artistic stereotypes — curated by Heorhii Kosovan.
Shuliev did not join the Soviet artistic system but preserved his own experimental language. His practice is significant as a bridge between the underground art of the 1980s and contemporary explorations of the body as form, rather than mere image.
In 2024, ProArt Gallery hosted a posthumous solo exhibition of Shuliev’s work, featuring new “bodily” abstractions — paintings that echoed his earlier experiments while resonating with a renewed emotional intensity.