New exhibition explores the world of the ‘Fantastic’ at Blacktown Arts Centre
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Blacktown artist, Marius Jastkowiak, will be showcased in a solo exhibition Maintaining an Equilibrium of the Fantastic from Friday, August 17 to Saturday, October 6 at Blacktown Arts Centre (78 Flushcombe Road, Blacktown).
In this digital age, it is not an uncommon view that painting, along with a swathe of other traditional mediums, no longer has relevance to contemporary arts practice. The rise of the computer and the range of artistic possibilities it has created has meant that many in the arts community see painting as a dead medium - a notion put to the lie by the work of artists such as Marius Jastkowiak.
Marius Jastkowiak's 'soft focus' paintings compel us to rethink visual language and the visual experience of reality. From suburban interiors to neon signage, Jastkowiak takes easily overlooked objects and spaces, as they dissolve in varying degrees, into abstraction. Jastkowiak utilises opposing dualities - suburban and urban, natural and artificial light, the immaterial nature of light and the physicality of paint, the painterly and the photographic - to contemplate looking, language and painting.
"Jastkowiak's paintings require that the viewer be placed at a certain optimum distance; only then do the works yield up their secrets," says Arts Theorist, Ann Finnegan. "Everything that happens in these paintings takes place in an abstracted zone of weight and light, a seeming exchange of matter and anti-matter". (Please find attached the full version of the catalogue essay written for the exhibition by Ann Finnegan).
Jastkowiak's work reveals a power of artistic vision that is firmly contemporary and that is committed to extending and celebrating painting as an art form. While displaying radical tendencies in his approach to content, Jastkowiak's work displays a beauty and humanity that is rarely found in any medium but that finds its opus in these works using oil-paint and canvas.
As a former graduate of the University of Western Sydney, Jastkowiak is a prime example of the talent pool of artists active in Western Sydney and the importance of nurturing and showcasing their work within the region.
Blacktown Arts Centre invites people to come along and meet Marius Jastkowiak at 6pm, Wednesday, September 5 as Jastkowiak discusses his artistic practice the work in his solo exhibition.
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Catalogue Essay_Marius Jastkowiak_ By Ann Finnegan.pdf
