Finisz

the works were carried out using a polymer coating, the so-called finish. This product is a common tool used in the final stage of creating houses, flats, usable spaces and others. In the last few years, regardless of the pandemic, in the city I live in, I see a rapid housing boom. A town near Warsaw which already being one of the most densely populated in Poland, is becoming even more dense. I was interested in how long such a process may take, will there be an end when the last piece of space is full, an overflow or maybe some kind of implosion.

Sometimes in the smaller towns you see things more sharply than in a big cities. Intensity of the metropolitan life, amount of affairs, events, processes can blur the view and some things are happening unnoticed. The process of slow but consistent “thickening” of space which is already thick, became for me a starting point for wider issues related to the modern world. The broadly understood excess (of consumption, information, emotions, addictions) is either mindlessly accepted as normal or for some reason is very difficult to resist. For me, the process of creating these works was the solution, application of thin layers of finishing coat, then sanding it and sprinkling the canvas with a watered-down putty, repeated everyday gestures until the work is finished It was a kind of intimate interaction with this seemingly banal, uninteresting material – the plastic packaging of which – left empty buckets with colorful inscriptions i see on the streets of the town every day. Meditative element, some kind of asceticism and slowness were essential here, the meaning of the work is not clear-cut, it is the result of many experiences, reflections, emotions that coincided with the pandemic and the associated isolation. Four-element work has the character of a relief, it is an image, but one that goes out into space.

The “Finish” is accompanied by a series of quasi-drawing works entitled “Interiors” and the video “Long-distance runner”

“Interiors” is a kind of supplement to “Finish”, these works were created in the meantime, when the main work was drying up and you had to wait. Here tooI used a putty, very diluted. I topped off with this „paint” the surface of various types of black sheets of paper. Paper sometimes absorbed the paint and sometimes it didn’t, then it stayed on the surface like a puddle until it dry on its own. The method was there every time almost identical, but each drawing came out different. While white, large „Finish” works are operating with surface, convexity, heaviness, they step “outside”, „ Interiors” invite to look inside, to stare  deeply. Randomly formed structures connect to the micro world, they have almost  photographic quality, they are an attempt to look inside, a pseudoscientific examination of the “nature of things”.

“Long Distance Runner” is a video work in which a runner runs but not is moving forward, each time he’s going back to where he started. Only the sound of a passing car extends the perspective of the image, partially saves the runner from performing Sisyphean work, repeating the same gesture forever. The scene is a looped fragment of less than two seconds from the opening scene of the British film “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”. In the film, a pupil of correction facility – a long-distance runner, loses a run on purpose, stopping just before the finish line, thus crossing hopes of the management. His talent becomes useless when he cannot serve propaganda – confirmation of the effectiveness of the educational methods of the institution in which he is staying. By “losing” the character returns to be “nobody”, but his gesture allows him to expose the mechanisms of power, to keep the internal independence, and the act of running becomes a sense in itself, a journey, moving in a space free from competitive, sport-like pressure. The video uses traditional painting and photographic val-ues – it suggests depth, distance, perspective … but by looping and adding sound in some way it sabotages the image – the landscape and the man become more real through the sense of hearing than sight.