Marcin ZAWICKI, 2020 Golem (on the pedestal) Golem (on the pedestal)

In seeking to understand Marcin Zawicki’s paintings, it is helpful to be familiar with how they are created. Each work is based on a maquette – a three-dimensional, sculptural model made by the artist. He produces these from found objects he has collected in the natural world, also including scraps or waste products such as wood, wire, polystyrene etc. This unusual approach to his artistic work opens up a broad frame of meaning, a grasp of the process of making nature visible and recognizable, and of reality per se. Zawicki’s images engage with alchemy and the conceptual constructs of the first philosophers.The works function as commentaries on the phenomenon of life in its own right, while also containing Zawicki’s reflections on the figure of the demiurge, the act of creation, and the relationship between being and visibility. The large-format “Golem” series, to which this work also belongs, is grounded in the myth of the golem – a fabricated object that is given life through a creative act. The clay model, turned into a living being by a word or a spell, reminds Zawicki of the act of transformation and the enchanted relationship between painting and its archetype. This gives rise to a kind of visual misconception when viewers seek to recognize what Zawicki inserts into his painting; most of the elements are reminiscent of something familiar, which, however, cannot always be defined precisely and fully.

Marcin Zawicki (Szczecin/PL 1985) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdánsk. In 2021 Marcin Zawicki received a STRABAG Artaward Recognition Award.