The series of works titled Destructs is a continuation of the series of paintings titled Fragments (2019/2020, inspired by the collections of the Acropolis Museum in Athens).
The idea to revisit the theme, deepen it, and analyze it from a different, more contemporary perspective arose during my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, shortly after the opening of its new location. The museum had few objects, and perhaps this was why their impact was significantly greater. Alina Szapocznikow’s sculpture „Friendship,” created to commemorate the Polish-Soviet „brotherly” relationship, was part of the exhibition, and still is. The object’s fate was not kind to it. For years, it was housed in the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, but in the 1990s, the decision was made to scrap the sculpture. Apparently, the arms didn’t fit through the doorway, so they were dismantled. Then, for a time, the sculpture (realistic, perhaps that’s why it survived) adorned the grounds of a scrapyard whose owner didn’t have the heart to destroy it. The hands disappeared.
In Destructs, I search for and observe destroyed monuments, dismantled and shattered sculptural objects, heroes thrown from their plinths. Shells carrying a new history.
Current conflicts naturally draw the eyes of creators and culture lovers to the fate of works of art in a situation of danger. I seek natural beauty, beauty in ugliness, beauty that develops over time, beauty eroded by the ravages of time. Ephemeral, unobtrusive beauty, beauty that lingers under the eyelids. Currently, in my painting project, I am trying to find all of this in a degraded object. It remains in dialogue not only with its creators – the sculptors – but with the destructive power of destruction, which for me also becomes a creative and inspiring force.

SELECTED WORKS: