Principium || Jarek Jeschke

Artist

Jerzy Jeschke

ABOUT EXHIBITION

In the latest works of Jarek Jeschke, the topic of various microorganic forms was taken. They have been enlarged many times here, which gives the impression of the image seen through the microscope. Various shapes and intense colors of organisms reflect the beauty of the simplest forms created by nature. These organisms are imperceptible to the human eye without proper equipment. We do not see them every day, hence the association with something unreal. On the other hand, they are not uncommon, they accompany people at every step. They are the foundation of our real world. The paintings presented at the latest exhibition at the Nova Gallery are an invitation to reflect on what is not only the simplest but also the most basic.
The very title of the exhibition – principium – speaks about the challenge that the artist undertook in his works. He tries to examine the beginnings of not only life, but also painting. He reproduces organic shapes with great precision, differentiates the texture of the painting, minutely reflects the details and tries to show the organic form as much as possible, which is suggested by thick streaks of individual shapes. At other times, his forms dissolve in themselves like lymph or plasma. All these forms, enlarged to a monstrous size (taking into account the actual size of microorganisms) become separate, almost extraterrestrial entities. The artist is constructing a separate, painterly world here, where abstraction is objectified.
It is interesting for me that most of the images look abstract and in fact they are pictures of the most-existing and realistic organisms – says Jeschke. His works show jugglery with what is real and abstract. The question arises, what is basic for painting, and thus art. Is it abstraction or nature? Or maybe abstraction is nature and vice versa?
It can be said that Jarek Jeschke is an artist-researcher who takes up a problem to start detailed research on it. This was the case in his previous works, in which he eg wondered about the nature of explosions or presented the sequence of shutters. Also, the artist’s latest works are organized into a problematic cycle. All his cycles constitute closed wholes. The artist analyzes the problem in a meticulous way, reproduces shots, and applies similar compositions. In the case of the newest works, this gives them additional meaning, it can be associated with a biologist’s album, organic herbarium or simply with biology lessons, during which each student must put in his notebook numerous drawings of newly recognized organisms. Jeschke takes up this teaching anew and tries to give her definition of painting as an art full of intimate transcendence, where the micro-world is a microcosm. What strikes this world is the extraordinary saturation of colors and elaborate forms, which are contradictory to the brutalist tendencies that can be observed in contemporary Polish painting. In the works of Jeschke, we can again focus on the aesthetic qualities of a work of art that can be the subject of a separate contemplation, a quiet and abstract meditation on beauty.
The artist, like a Japanese poet, directs our eyes to the basic forms and makes us discover their meanings anew.