Acrylic, tape on canvas


Unique

Marcin Jasik's paintings are a constant search in the area of the painterly language of abstraction. The artist draws inspiration from both his own experiences and the history of painting, by re-processing iconic images or motifs. What is visible in his works is free, intuitive utterance, however, guided by a conscious system of meanings and logic forms. These seemingly contradictory forms emphasize the narrative structure in pictures. The final result is a clear composition with which the artist asks questions about the nature of human existence. 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.

El Mirage #01, 1976

From the series El Mirage

Silver Gelatin print

50,5 x 66 cm

Edition of 12

Grey Crawford’s El Mirage (1975-78) series beginning in the mid-70s, consisted of numerous experiments using metal etching plates, glass panes, mirrors, wood, and darkroom manipulations in various performance-like positions on Mojave Desert lake bed in Southern California. What makes these early images important is how Crawford utilized the photographic process as a way to alter the physical scale of his angular configurations. The significance of these sculptures and visual performances, as pointed out by Lyle Rexer, "are not in what they reveal about a specific event or situation, but in how they reflect on everything around or beyond it: photography, sculpture, space, place, and perception.” Crawford’s use of different materials reflects his innate sense of activism, making art through the act of doing. His El Mirage series combines his knowledge of art history with his use of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square to a more collaborative dialogue with his contemporaries at the time, such as Robert Smithsonian, Michael Heizer, and Carl Andre.

Relation (Three Angels), 1975

Silver gelatin print

64 x 33 cm

Józef Robakowski began his artistic experiments with photography and painting beginning 1958-67. This practice led him to go beyond the scope of how these mediums had been used at that time by creating installations that combined both objects with video. His concept of Energy of Art originates from his knowledge of Russian Constructivism and is based on Malevich’s theory on image. In this hypothesis, a painting is an "energy screen” that the artist first saturates with his own creative life force, radiating back to the viewer. Robakowiski’s pieces are fueled by this natural state of Energy and emanate his intention to liberate the works from its non-structural elements. His use of energetic expressions combined with an investigative and analytical attitude are the central themes behind his artistic practice.