A Surreal Tale of Longing for Space

Exhibition Review

The exhibition Distant Lights of the Vistula by Marcin Wrzal, presented at the Art Brut Gallery in Lublin, offers yet another opportunity to encounter the work of this Polish Art Brut artist. The series was born out of a week-long isolation in the studio during a plein-air painting retreat in Józefów on the Vistula, where relentless rain forced (or perhaps encouraged?) Wrzal into introspection and intense creative work.

The outcome of this solitude is a cycle of ten large canvases, each measuring 100 × 100 cm, whose vivid, often contrasting colours—far more developed since his last, not-so-distant exhibition—seem to leap out from the surface! Could this bolder use of colour be a protest against the gloomy weather, or rather an inner declaration of artistic independence? As always with Wrzal, one can only speculate.

While the paintings continue the artist’s characteristic style, they also expand upon certain elements—particularly the use of intense colour fields. Fortunately, this evolution does not come at the expense of hidden symbolism or the metaphorical, surreal forms and contours that define his work. A welcome continuation from his previous exhibition, Scratched, is the use of large-format canvases. There is a special pleasure in standing before a metre-wide surface and letting oneself be drawn into its depth, searching for the layers of meaning within spaces that could almost have been borrowed from Salvador Dalí.

Yet among these works there are exceptions—one of which was chosen to promote the exhibition. What strikes the viewer here is the minimalism and reduction of form: whether distilled into abstract, almost geometric shapes (as in the painting from the poster), or into pseudo-realist compositions where the main motif gives way to a seemingly empty space—one lacking clear detail, blurred like an out-of-focus photograph. A space that both overwhelms and, thanks to Wrzal’s sensitive handling of tone, opens up before the viewer with even greater depth. Can you guess which painting I mean?

Marcin Wrzal
Distant Lights of the Vistula

On view: 3–30 September 2024

teatro-terapia

Własność Fundacji Teatroterapia Lubelska. Wszystkie prawa zastrzeżone.

lublin

Zrealizowano przy pomocy finansowej Miasta Lublin