Exhibition: 14 September – 11 November 2023
Opening: Friday, 15 September 2023, 6 – 9 pm
Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin
In the framework of Berlin Art Week, Persons Projects is delighted to present the first solo exhibition of young Polish painter Marcin Jasik, last year’s winner of the international STRABAG Award of Recognition.
His abstract paintings carry their own visual literacy, which he then reduces through his own aesthetic filter to create a feeling of open spatiality. They emit a sense of lightness in how he utilizes an effortless score of gestures and strokes through a series of applied lines and shapes to create a state of ocular tensions. Jasik builds up his reduced narrative by using thin layers of paint and acrylics to choreograph his own synaptic compositions in his visual pursuit of what's essential, the essence behind what we see but feel. His paintings float somewhere between a pale John Zurier and a reduced Antonio Tapies. They represent his pursuit to form a new perspective on how to balance the material world with the spiritual.
Jasik's canvases address his basic questions about the nature of human existence. His source for this internal inquiry comes from the Legend of St. Francis fresco by Giotto di Bondone from the Basilica of Assisi. Jasik abstracts the basic lines from the scene where St Francis renounces his earthly possessions. Jasik utilizes the horizontal division of St Francis' action by combining it with his interpretation to create a visual dialogue between the secular (earth) and the sacred (heaven) in his attempt to capture the saint's gesture. To realize this visually, Jasik introduces individual planes to the lower part of the canvas through black horizontal lines of sprayed black paint. He then uses various pastel colors at the upper part of the painting to create a sense of illumination that unleashes the deep tone of red that intensifies the division between these two fields of colored hues. Therefore, each of his works is connected to one another through this sensory language of line and shadow that represents the spatial rendering of a spiritual state of mind. What's important when experiencing a presentation of Jasik's works, is understanding the difficulty that lies behind these seemingly effortless strokes and lines of expression. He leaves nothing to chance as his canvases represent an inner state of meditation that reduces his presence to a slight whisper. Jasik approaches his paintings in a carefully coordinated manner. Less is more, with color used sparingly as a shroud, veiling what we can see while inspiring the viewer to absorb the experience rather than analyzing it.
Jasik's approach to abstraction falls within the traditional Polish parameters of painting with the works and theories of Władysław Strzemiński: In his Theory of Vision (posthumously in 1958), he views the existential world as a constantly evolving entity influenced by history and external conditions, both culturally as well as socially. The curator Paulina Olszewska once wrote, "Strzemiński argued that in the process of seeing, what is important is not what the eye captures mechanically, but what we ourselves realize from this seeing."Marcin Jasik is a rare example of a young artist committed to his practice who works not from any mainstream trends but from his own island of thought.
Marcin Jasik (*1990 in Warsaw, Poland) graduated from the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He took part in several individual and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. In 2022, he was a finalist for the STRABAG Art Award in Vienna. His works are part of private and institutional collections such as the Svetlik Art Foundation, the STRABAG Artcollection, and the mBank Collection.
