Icon 2013

Małgorzata Serwatka made this 80 x 60 cm ‘Icon’ with, what looks like, mixed media. The palette is muted, almost ghostly, setting a stage for something uncanny to come forth. Serwatka knows that art making is as much about the unexpected as it is about intention. Look at the texture of the saint's face, it is almost translucent, a milky, opalescent surface that contrasts so sharply with the gold leaf halo. Then there's the shirt adorned with teddy bears, creating a playful anachronism that jars against the traditional icon format. The cat, oh that piercing green-eyed cat, disrupts the solemnity, grounding the piece in the everyday, injecting life into the ethereal. This feels like a nod to artists like Francis Picabia, who similarly played with disrupting the accepted themes of classical painting. Art is a conversation, a constant exchange of ideas, where meanings are not fixed but fluid, inviting endless possibilities.