Marcin Maciejowski: Not Obvious
22 May - 29 June 2008
Wilkinson is pleased to present NOT OBVIOUS by Polish artist Marcin Maciejowski. Maciejowski’s paintings focus on the light and shade in scenes from everyday life and current affairs and his eye almost always points towards the political. Maciejowski’s paintings alert us to his concerns, be they the rise of nationalism, the ironies of the contemporary art market or the hierarchy of the peoples and artists within it. He records rather than invents, but the flatness of his pared down aesthetic allows space for us to finish his stories and tell our own tales.
For this, his first solo exhibition at Wilkinson, Maciejowski takes archival images from newspapers and publications as his source material. From recent news items to vintage court cases, Maciejowski’s subject matter is scattered across the decades, past and present juxtaposed under his carefully balanced editorial control.
Paul McCartney, London, 2008 and Roman Polanski,
Los Angeles, 1977 are
taken from press photographs of these
famous court cases. In both instances Maciejowski has decided to leave
the figures featureless, dehumanised and
blank, thus removing them from the situation, removing the facts. So
what at first appears to be documentary, through
Maciejowski’s sparse brushwork becomes less a representation of an event
and more a feeling, a clue, a sense of
something having occurred, somewhere.
Cupboard is a snapshot of a domestic interior inspired by a brochure
about the workers' protests that took place in
Poznan in 1956. The cupboard door hangs open in disarray as if someone
left in a hurry. And this is the kind of story that
Maciejowski likes to tell, a sort of open ended criticism, where his
paintings highlight moments and occurrences and
then leave space for the viewer to draw their own conclusions. But also
for Maciejowski to paint is to self medicate, to
find a way of dealing with his own uncertainties and inner confusion.
Marcin has consistently painted women, from femme fatales to artist’s wives, as faceless figures in his film stills series, to intimate groups of women preparing to go out. Uncover (Dorota) is a portrait of a girl covering her face with her hands in a spontaneous gesture, like a photograph from a party you didn’t attend. But Maciejowski denies us the expectation that the painting’s title provokes and the revelation of her face can only be fulfilled in our imagination.
Marcin Maciejowski was born in Babice, near Krakow, Poland where he lives
and works. In 1996 he founded ‘Grupa
Ladnie’ with Rafal Bujnowski, Marek Firek, Wilhelm Sasnal, and Josef
Tomczyk Kurosaw. He has exhibited at The
National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, Germany, Museum of Modern Art,
Vienna, Austria, The Prague Biennale,
Kunsthalle Wien, Austria and most recently at Pies Gallery, Poznan and
Art-Pol, Warsaw, Poland.
For further information please contact Jackie Daish 020 8980 2662 or Jackie@wilkinsongallery.com