Tomasz Ciecierski – Nostalgia

The solo exhibition of Tomasz Ciecierski presents his works from the past two years. Two new large-format paintings (Shapeless) are abstract compositions whose main motif is depth: both conventional, implicit depth and depth which physically reaches out from the painting, a reference to his nailed together paintings. Nostalgia is a photography project: the artist has taken photos of faces which do not look into the camera, stare outside the frame, withdraw. The exhibition also presents new paintings by Ciecierski, constructed out of smaller canvases set one next to the other (High Tide – Low Tide), and photographs nailed together like the paintings.

Tomasz Ciecierski has been reinventing painting for more than forty years. On the one hand, he builds upon the modern concept of painting: free to be painting alone, not a servant to religion, monarchy, totalitarian dictatorship, democracy, or any other ideology; painting dedicated to reflection on seeing; painting about painting. On the other hand, Ciecierski liberally employs photography and its imagery, as well as sculptural thinking which builds physical depth and marks the corporeality of objects.

Ciecierski not only knows and understands traditions derived from the history of art, the ideas of modern painting, and the specificity of his media. Ciecierski (b. 1945) is an experimentator, vivacious and au courant, sometimes more so than the younger generations of artists. His work presents painting ever renewed, far from Modernist petrification, light, even pleasant.