Untitled 

Curator: Here we have an untitled painting by Zdzislaw Beksinski, a striking example of his matter-painting style, primarily in browns and yellows. Editor: It's instantly unnerving. The way the colors are applied and scraped, the obscured features… it evokes a sense of decay and fragmentation. Curator: Beksinski's matter-painting is characterized by his intensive engagement with the medium. Layering and then often distressing the surfaces create depth and texture, a palpable physicality. What do you make of that '2' at the top of the image? Editor: The '2' is fascinating. It's isolated, almost floating there, while below is what appears to be a deconstructed human face. The number, for me, evokes duality, perhaps a reflection on opposing aspects of the human psyche. What about its application – its form and making – do you notice in that number, considering how it might point us to the materials? Curator: Note that he applied it as he layered his painting—it becomes part of that texture and materiality as a constructional symbol, but it certainly seems placed above the face deliberately. I find the technique deeply compelling; Beksinski apparently created his distinctive impasto effects with tools he fashioned himself. His physical engagement with these works—scraping, building, manipulating—resonates with that emotional intensity you mention, because it is very manually created and destroyed at the same time. Editor: Absolutely. He clearly rejected clean lines and traditional representation; the artist creates an atmosphere of unease by evoking the human form. What do you see here—do you find a relationship in its material facture that carries emotional or spiritual impact, by some potential symbolism? Curator: I can certainly say the way he engages physically and materially with that canvas carries its own weight—to me, there is not necessarily meaning that can be described, but only sensed or felt. And yet it clearly triggers powerful feelings for you, doesn't it? Editor: It does. It hints at trauma, maybe societal anxieties projected onto this single, disintegrating figure. It almost feels like a warning. So perhaps in its decay is embedded something much older and archetypal, through its layered use of imagery. Curator: I think it is interesting to remember, given its darker themes, that he said the work "aims at triggering equally dark sensations without the observer being able to read a more detailed message out of it." And with its manual, materially intensive methods of its construction, Beksinski still offers a visual language and feeling so effectively for those dark ideas and impulses in us.