As is characteristic of Wrzal’s work, the picture plane does not form a unified scene. Individual elements fail to coalesce into a coherent whole, while the unoccupied areas carry part of the composition’s weight. Rectangular divisions, both vertical and diagonal, overlapping forms and distinct lines define successive areas of the image. Within these areas, the spaces between individual motifs become subjects in their own right. Depending on where the eye settles first, negative space can attract as much attention as the depicted forms themselves.

In some compositions, intense patches of colour and contours almost completely fill the canvas; others, by contrast, are restricted to black, white and grey, their expression shaped above all by contrast and gesture. In both cases, the image remains open, and its meaning cannot be derived solely from recognising individual motifs, among which eyes often predominate. They appear not only within human faces, but also as autonomous forms, functioning independently of the figures. Removed from their natural context, repeated and juxtaposed with other motifs, they become part of a distinctive repertoire of signs.

The exhibition What Happened to Us. War... directs attention towards the human being whose experience extends beyond direct encounters with violence. It also encompasses life in the shadow of events, a sense of threat and the difficulty of returning to an earlier way of perceiving reality. Wrzal’s paintings offer no ready-made answers to these experiences. Instead, they reveal a world in which recognition and understanding no longer go hand in hand, and what is familiar can suddenly become strange.

Marcin Wrzal
What Happened to Us. War...

7–31 October 2026