Przemek Matecki
30 Apr - 04 Jun 2011
PRZEMEK MATECKI
30 April – 4 June, 2011
In his paintings Przemek Matecki (*1976 in Zagan/Poland) reconfigures historical stages of those painterly gestures, which have today become recognized as the canonized core of European art history.
In his recent works Rembrandt, Delacroix, Géricault, Cézanne and Maurice Denis are reappearing in allusions and direct quotes, demonstrating the banality of their achievements as much as their still poignant formal grandess. Matecki refigures these pre-history of European Modernism in their very own medium and at the same time invades it with his re-paintings, constituting in his case the ground for collages, drawings and variations in oil, pencil and paper on canvas. Matecki mixes painterly mastery with its humorous, but yet formally strict amendments, with cut out models from mass cultural magazines, art ads and stages of prefabrication, drawings and brush strokes. He seems to probe the masterly techniques and signatures against the backdrop of contemporary advertising and fashion photography, witnessing that their compositions resemble one another, even if their surfaces do not.
Matecki’s new, drastic confrontations of masterly quotes celebrate his multiple sources dispensing their hierarchies. It is an anarchistic, yet knowing gesture which challenges painting on its own grounds instead of evading it. Collage, historically rosen as Dada's rebellion against painterly aestheticisms, in Matecki's work is itself turned into one of its formal means, Dada becomes appropriated for painting. Matecki seems to translate a 'joy of painting' into its systematic conversion with contemporary visual pleasures, exhibiting their indebtedness as much as the lust of its activity, of different techniques, brushstrokes, drawings styles and colour fields.
Matecki's paintings and installations are on view at carlier | gebauer in a pavilion, designed specifically for their display, a cabinet for Matecki’s retouched master- workings. Matecki has studied at the University of Zielona Gora (Poland) and exhibited his works widely in Europe throughout the last years.
30 April – 4 June, 2011
In his paintings Przemek Matecki (*1976 in Zagan/Poland) reconfigures historical stages of those painterly gestures, which have today become recognized as the canonized core of European art history.
In his recent works Rembrandt, Delacroix, Géricault, Cézanne and Maurice Denis are reappearing in allusions and direct quotes, demonstrating the banality of their achievements as much as their still poignant formal grandess. Matecki refigures these pre-history of European Modernism in their very own medium and at the same time invades it with his re-paintings, constituting in his case the ground for collages, drawings and variations in oil, pencil and paper on canvas. Matecki mixes painterly mastery with its humorous, but yet formally strict amendments, with cut out models from mass cultural magazines, art ads and stages of prefabrication, drawings and brush strokes. He seems to probe the masterly techniques and signatures against the backdrop of contemporary advertising and fashion photography, witnessing that their compositions resemble one another, even if their surfaces do not.
Matecki’s new, drastic confrontations of masterly quotes celebrate his multiple sources dispensing their hierarchies. It is an anarchistic, yet knowing gesture which challenges painting on its own grounds instead of evading it. Collage, historically rosen as Dada's rebellion against painterly aestheticisms, in Matecki's work is itself turned into one of its formal means, Dada becomes appropriated for painting. Matecki seems to translate a 'joy of painting' into its systematic conversion with contemporary visual pleasures, exhibiting their indebtedness as much as the lust of its activity, of different techniques, brushstrokes, drawings styles and colour fields.
Matecki's paintings and installations are on view at carlier | gebauer in a pavilion, designed specifically for their display, a cabinet for Matecki’s retouched master- workings. Matecki has studied at the University of Zielona Gora (Poland) and exhibited his works widely in Europe throughout the last years.