Slawomir Marzec
Anna Solbach
Gallery Miejska
in Lodz presents in March paintings of Slawomir Marzec (graduated from the Academy
of Fine Arts in Warsaw and Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf). His paintings are covered
with an infinite numbers of particles of over a hundred colors. Colors spotted
at random, but also laid laboriously, dot after dot with a thin chip. Looking
at them in proper light, it can be said that they are both in the green, blue
or red tone. Colors and forms are here unified in total fragmentarisation, which
you can experience as a kind of pulsation. The physiology of our eyes obtains
from this special "morphological field" (Lyotard) incessant stream
of shapes, contours, figures which appear spontaneously to every movement of
our imagination and thought. These images have not the central point of view
– moving around them we uncover different kind of forms created by surface quality
(relief) or varnish lines. They appear or disappear, dazzle or darken. Every
point of view and every kind of attention shapes the paintings anew. The special
interaction is based not on technology, but on the economy of our sight. Forms,
meanings in Marzec`s art not so much exist, but they rather have a tendency to
appear. They are given rather by intuition or supposition, than by perception.
Titles of the paintings
often are presented on glittering engraved golden metals – reading them
it is necessary to "fight" your own reflection on them. The metallic
character render them objective rank, which let treat them as possessing equal
rights element of the "situation of image". The titles sometimes apparent
inconceivably (for example: "Reconstructing Cluny cloisters", "The
Fire of London According to Swedenborg"), because they refer to widely unknown
or unrecognized topics. Though the paradox of representing an unknown story through
elusive "representation" leads to current problems: questions about
the way of existence, rules of differentiation and so on, but first of all to
the question about our sight. The sight as the power of shaping the world, as
the ability to imagine things, which is basic to our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
The picture "Landscape
with horizon" is fairly typical for Marzec`s art of images (" painting
does not interest me so much as image" – he says). The horizontal color
intensities give here the intuition of horizon. We can perceive two vertical
lines near side edges of the canvas, which join the up/down margins. The lines
are made by relieves covered by color dots. In upper part they break, but only
seemingly – they are continued with lines of varnish. This is the frequent
opposition in Slawomir Marzec`s images: the relief (as kind of trace, something
primary to the image), and varnish (as complementary illusions). One of his paintings
carries the symptomatic title "Between Trace and Illusion"). The notion
of horizon is deconstructed here to reveal its fully variety – an elusive
stability, pulsing simultaneity, appearance of complexity, which expects and
demands some definition of its own finiteness.
We can perceive Slawomir Marzec`s images on many levels – from pure visual
pleasure, by game of notion and associations, to a riddle, which draws us in
specified state of sensibility and concentration. And just this specific state
of attention seems to be its solution.
