PRIVATE SPACE

Artur Przebindowski is an artist whose creative activity can not be described in a clear-cut way. Even though it is entirely individual and coherent it is not possible, fortunately, to spell it out. A sensualist and a scientist, an impressionist and a matehematician, a cool constructor of visual effects, and a subtle painter in one…

Przebindowski employs images of nature, views of cities, small provincial streets, and landscapes of Greek islands. However, it is only a basis on which the author builds up apparently unreal elements of rhythmics, colourful nuances, sensual qualities and creates an autonomous system of the picture. The artist processes real images and focuses on constructing the sole reality, which is the picture itself, and not the nature depicted in it. He doesn’t portray, but he creates using a code of eternal and adamant laws of painting. In that, as one has a close look, often meticulous work almost each stroke is detectable, it gradually produces light, shows texture, generates colours which are furthermore resolved into reflections. A voice of Venetian masters can be heard here, who passionately disclosed painting sequence of the canvas. The whole emotion of paintings nonetheless is contained in colours; in clashes between cool and warm shades, in bothering, seemingly irritating combinations of colours. The inner pulse of the painting material, its trembling is, however, set on a solid vertical and horizontal construction. The cool geometry becomes a rather sensual allusion to mathematics. The artist’s works make one think of flickering Byzantine mosaics, or of Viennese art nouveau. The geometrical net intensifies decorative qualities, turning the canvas into a kind of linear frieze. On the other hand, it tangles up the foreground with the background and multiplies space, as if one layer after another were exposed just as a mouldered fresco.

Dampened, but resounding with a variety of shades colouring, as well as horizontally extended size of Przebindowski’s paintings places them close to wall painting. The layouts, even though intimate in their mood and size acquire a specific monumental character resembling ancient frescoes.

It seems Przebindowski paints for the sake of taking delight in paints, their texture, in subtlety of the light and plastic qualities of the pictures. However, when painting elements of nature or a figure he treats them as something more than a mere pretext for pure picturalism; the process becomes a part of phenomenally constructed and autonomous painting space, intimate, imbued with drowsy and vague moods.

 

Paulina Jurkowska, 2003

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