nottte 2019

Curator: Lech Jankowski's acrylic work "nottte," created in 2019, employs the visual language of abstract expressionism in order to engage with notions of landscape. Editor: It feels heavy, almost oppressive. The texture gives the sense that you could touch it and feel the grit of the night. A sky full of untold happenings, rendered in indigo. What are those figures down below? Curator: Indeed, Jankowski's impasto technique contributes significantly to the visual weight. Consider how the textured application of acrylic-paint acts as a signifier for the weight and density of the implied landscape itself. I read them as silhouettes or shadows—remnants of a fading presence. The dark, indeterminate forms that inhabit the horizontal zone contrast effectively with the modulated tones that bleed upward into the 'sky.' Editor: Shadows. Right. They seem a little playful for pure shadow. Is there any intended meaning that he attributes to them? I can see how their stark outline and composition offer some starkness and relief within this largely fluid space. And what are the dimensions? The scale must be substantial for the texture to read so dynamically. Curator: The interplay between darkness and light, order and disorder. He works in ways that resist stable meanings. The horizontal division in "nottte," and the progression within its shadowy symbols, seems almost like the linguistic structures that point toward underlying patterns, systems or narratives—although what exactly these patterns might denote will resist any attempt toward complete specification. Editor: He resists meaning-making even as his arrangements imply intent! The negative space here sings of isolation and the ephemerality of existence. It's somber and bewitching; if the intent here isn't to provide explicit clarity, then at the very least Jankowski wants to inspire some emotional response. The atmospheric depth pulls you in! Curator: It's through the very processes of deconstruction and semiotic play, in works such as "nottte", that an artist establishes a potent expressive means. It encourages introspection by challenging viewers to discover structure and meaning in a setting lacking clear contextual anchors. Editor: An evocative paradox. He's left me pondering the secrets within its twilight landscape. There's a certain raw truth laid bare across the entire space, or some fundamental essence hovering just beyond it. It may not spell out any answers, but that isn't a deficiency. Curator: Quite so, his visual vocabulary in "nottte," through abstract forms and compositional strategies, serves not to communicate a definite concept, but instead operates almost as a conduit for affective experience.