03.11.16-20 2016

Andrzej Nowacki made this small, intimate work, "03.11.16-20", in 2016. It looks like he's chasing something with his materials; smudgy graphite verticals anchor a floating red square. You get the feeling that making art is all about responding to what’s already there on the page. The texture of the graphite is so key here, it's not about precision, but more about the accidental beauty of the marks that emerge. The graphite isn’t dense, but airy. The blurred quality gives the piece a hazy, dreamlike effect. Then there’s that punchy square of red! What a counterpoint to the soft graphite. I like the way that the lower edge of the red mark is the most dense. It’s as if the red is sinking into the off-white of the paper. I’m reminded of the work of Agnes Martin, where subtle shifts in line and color create a deeply meditative space. Like Martin, Nowacki shows us that less can be more, and that art is often about the questions we ask, not the answers we provide.