Billiards 

Curator: Zaniewski’s piece, simply titled "Billiards," employs drawing, pencil, and pastel in a rather intriguing way. I am getting lost already in how the materials come together... Editor: A mood. That's the first thing that strikes me—almost melancholic, definitely contemplative. That soft-edged world in shades of tangerine is so... well, it’s like a memory, wouldn’t you say? The geometric rendering is so calming too... Curator: It's how these materials were worked to mimic that particular state. Note the bold use of what looks like basic geometric shapes against that, well, is it orange, is it brown, what's the material basis here? Editor: Orange dreamsicle meets dimly-lit pool hall. Perhaps that explains the emotional response—the nostalgia baked into every pastel stroke, or so it would seem. Curator: And what is he hoping to signal here? Let’s break it down. I am curious if the labor in the artist's hands is attempting to reproduce something in reality or something that has already occurred, like an artifact... Editor: That question hangs in the air, doesn't it? Like smoke from a late-night game, perhaps? Or, and I'm just riffing here, perhaps it is more concerned with exploring absence through suggested shapes and colors... like he deliberately omits the players and their actions and reduces things down to those objects... a billiard table. It can't be by chance Curator: This kind of figuration asks whether craft is inherently, ideologically material or an ethereal echo—Zaniewski does ask such profound questions. It does this very well. Editor: Ultimately, Zaniewski gives us an opportunity, really, to remember places that, once filled with noise and activity, and so present for a moment we never see again; can now also possess an exquisite serenity. It becomes almost a symbol... of memory itself? Curator: Right. With the artist doing the essential work to create memories where once was labor and manufacturing, well, just basic form... very impactful way of working. Thank you for expanding that for me! Editor: Thanks to you as well; this image is the starting line for so many great mental excursions, I suppose!