Let’s see how things are going. No theorizing or poeticizing. A commercial art gallery is treated like a shop, or rather like an exclusive boutique. It is not so much the objects that are bought as the value contained in them. The value of art is defined and created in various ways. There are short fads and trends. In the long duration, canons are established. But they also change. The value of art can be fluid. Like thinking.
Some come to the gallery because of the need for an aesthetic, intellectual and emotional encounter with a work of art. Some want to commune with it on a daily basis and make a purchase. Still others, especially today, need somewhere to put excess money that loses value. The latter usually then go to a boutique with a promoted brand and buy a material object, most often with a large image content in the image, as “unique” and durable as possible. It is best if it was hand-made and signed with the name of a famous creator. Research was conducted in auction houses—paintings in red are the best sellers.
The value of art is ephemeral dust, like mental speculations and emotions. Paul’s paintings contain varying degrees of them. Some are easily “violated”, “touched”. They may undergo irreversible changes despite the durability of the materials used. They are created in long series, consistently and methodically. The process of their formation requires the use of specific procedures. Reduction, accumulation and chance are involved. Some arise as a side effect of working on others. In the latest series, new ones are created partially covering the older ones, layer by layer. Others cannot be taken with you from the gallery.
As Adam Budak put it “Seemingly contradictory methods of reducing/erasing on the one hand, and accumulating/amassing on the other balance the artist’s interest in excess and a void of the visual.”
at Piktogram, Warsaw
until February 11, 2023