Wawrzyniec Tokarski
20 Jan - 24 Feb 2007
WAWRZYNIEC TOKARSKI
"Cannot Be Seen From Within (is that okay with you?)"
Vernissage: Friday, 19 January 2007 from 6 to 8 pm in the presence of the artist.
Wawrzyniec Tokarski (born 1968 in Gdansk/Poland) completed part of his education at the Academies of Art in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe before he moved to Berlin, where today he lives and works. After participation in the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, in exhibitions at Mannheim’s Kunsthalle, Frankfurt’s Kunstverein, Miami’s Rubell Family Collection, etc., the artist is being given his first solo presentation in Switzerland at the Galerie Bob van Orsouw.An unmistakable element of Tokarski’s signature style is the coequality between script and image. In his paintings the artist does not so much depict something as undertake to study the pictorial quality in language and the signifying character in pictures. The texts in Tokarski’s paintings do not comment on the picture, just as little as the picture illustrates the text. Rather the textual elements are treated as subjects equal in importance to his portrayal of landscapes, everyday scenes, icons of capitalism (sport cars) and religion (the Madonna).
The models for Tokarski’s pictures stem from archives, his own or others. The texts he uses quote evocative advertising slogans, political statements or rousing headlines. In the same way Tokarski makes use of existing logos or company trademarks and reworks them into what he calls “popular emblematics”. Probably extracted from a financial magazine, the artist turns catchy titles such as “More Growth – More Work” into a large-scale pictorial syllogism: “More Work – More Stress”. What at first glance seems like a reproach of our achievementoriented society, at a closer look evades any easy interpretation. For the new title (“More Growth – More Work. More Work – More Stress”) hovers above an abstract composition in gray and pastel tones that at the lower end features two crossed bones – an ironic reworking of the hammer and sickle.
Tokarski’s way with language is drawn less from his teacher Joseph Kosuth and more from his love of science fiction, which the artist sees as generating fictive countercultural worlds by its association of the grotesque with the impossible. Semantic ambiguity and a claim that painting is discourse-oriented can be seen as Tokarski’s leitmotifs. So that the same pictorial contents and textual elements that in advertising and the media seem easily decipherable are, through their transformation into the medium of painting, given till then unknown, sometimes irritating semantic contexts.
While the media’s “extensive use of pictures” creates a “hyperreality” (Gernot Böhme) in which things appear shinier and more seductive, Tokarski deconstructs this “hyperreality” by unmasking it as empty and insubstantial. His painting style restricts itself to the fragmentary and sketchy; objects are only suggested, look unfinished and enigmatic. The painting becomes for Tokarski a still respite in the midst of an unremitting flood of media images. While the media make us believe that pictures are more real than things, the artist rebels against such pretension. In a large-scale watercolor from 2004 he warns us – in writing that stretches across the entire picture plane: “It Is Wrong to Judge Things by Appearance” – a warning that can also be understood as a promise to avenge this “betrayal of pictures” (Gernot Böhme) by painting new ones.
Birgid Uccia
© Wawrzyniec Tokarski
Rainbow Banner, 2006
Acrylic on canvas
"Cannot Be Seen From Within (is that okay with you?)"
Vernissage: Friday, 19 January 2007 from 6 to 8 pm in the presence of the artist.
Wawrzyniec Tokarski (born 1968 in Gdansk/Poland) completed part of his education at the Academies of Art in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe before he moved to Berlin, where today he lives and works. After participation in the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, in exhibitions at Mannheim’s Kunsthalle, Frankfurt’s Kunstverein, Miami’s Rubell Family Collection, etc., the artist is being given his first solo presentation in Switzerland at the Galerie Bob van Orsouw.An unmistakable element of Tokarski’s signature style is the coequality between script and image. In his paintings the artist does not so much depict something as undertake to study the pictorial quality in language and the signifying character in pictures. The texts in Tokarski’s paintings do not comment on the picture, just as little as the picture illustrates the text. Rather the textual elements are treated as subjects equal in importance to his portrayal of landscapes, everyday scenes, icons of capitalism (sport cars) and religion (the Madonna).
The models for Tokarski’s pictures stem from archives, his own or others. The texts he uses quote evocative advertising slogans, political statements or rousing headlines. In the same way Tokarski makes use of existing logos or company trademarks and reworks them into what he calls “popular emblematics”. Probably extracted from a financial magazine, the artist turns catchy titles such as “More Growth – More Work” into a large-scale pictorial syllogism: “More Work – More Stress”. What at first glance seems like a reproach of our achievementoriented society, at a closer look evades any easy interpretation. For the new title (“More Growth – More Work. More Work – More Stress”) hovers above an abstract composition in gray and pastel tones that at the lower end features two crossed bones – an ironic reworking of the hammer and sickle.
Tokarski’s way with language is drawn less from his teacher Joseph Kosuth and more from his love of science fiction, which the artist sees as generating fictive countercultural worlds by its association of the grotesque with the impossible. Semantic ambiguity and a claim that painting is discourse-oriented can be seen as Tokarski’s leitmotifs. So that the same pictorial contents and textual elements that in advertising and the media seem easily decipherable are, through their transformation into the medium of painting, given till then unknown, sometimes irritating semantic contexts.
While the media’s “extensive use of pictures” creates a “hyperreality” (Gernot Böhme) in which things appear shinier and more seductive, Tokarski deconstructs this “hyperreality” by unmasking it as empty and insubstantial. His painting style restricts itself to the fragmentary and sketchy; objects are only suggested, look unfinished and enigmatic. The painting becomes for Tokarski a still respite in the midst of an unremitting flood of media images. While the media make us believe that pictures are more real than things, the artist rebels against such pretension. In a large-scale watercolor from 2004 he warns us – in writing that stretches across the entire picture plane: “It Is Wrong to Judge Things by Appearance” – a warning that can also be understood as a promise to avenge this “betrayal of pictures” (Gernot Böhme) by painting new ones.
Birgid Uccia
© Wawrzyniec Tokarski
Rainbow Banner, 2006
Acrylic on canvas