GR601 Student Project — Transition

Jarek Puczel

TRANSITION

Jarek Puczel

TRANSITION

10/12 – 11/16/2021

MAYBAUM GALLERY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Biography

ARTIST

Jarek Puczel

Born in 1965 in Poland, Puczel graduated from the University of Warsaw and gained his artistic experience as a filmmaker, graphic designer and painter.

He views his style as emotional, but calming, reduced in color, building stories, but pointing at illusion and unveiling the materiality of paints. Showing the individuals, but talking about a common human experiences.

There is also probably something deeply "Eastern European" in his style. You can even feel the heritage of painting icons: human figures are reduced in details to their main psychological features.

This artist is focused on those less usual yet surprisingly beautiful fragments; his work carries the idea that life is a movie or a game of illusion where different realities play with one another.

“The deepest field of emotional experiences.”

Paradoxically, an old-time "iconic heritage" can be regarded... as a progressive conceptual basis. " By the way, the outside world really doesn't exist, as quantum physics teaches us."

In his "Lovers" series he focuses on deeply hidden, intimate connections between couples. The strongest tensions, field of learning through love and pain. But of course, you can't see anything unless you're not inside as a intimate participant, the paint shows and covers at the same time. The surface gets wavy, subjected to an alternating rhythm of disturbances, tensions and calms. We are forcing to read between the lines, to dive into this situation with our interpretation, our own emotions in the mirror of the painting.

From the apparently unspectacular situations Puczel creates an interesting and tense moments by exploring the empty silence of different situations and reducing images to the most essential details. The colors Jarek uses are telling a story for itself reduced, yet expressive they create an outstanding clarity that gives an unfinished, gestural quality to his paintings.

The result is sort of an archive of slightly faded half-memories, sketched out in richlyhued oil on canvas. The overall impression on the viewer of his canvases is a conflict between warmth and cold, between what seems close and what seems distant.

Jarek Puczel Transition Oil on Canvas

Artwork

HOPE

Oil on Canvas

The characters depicted in his paintings take refuge in safe interiors or vast open spaces. To discovering themselves anew after their previous roles have been lost and their paths of return have been cut off. As his artistic practice develops within this new environment, Puczel accepts and learns to love bitter sweet polarity and makes it the core of his art in transition.

He reduces and intensifies the painted form on his canvas, purposefully minimizing facial features and avoiding the individual aspects of the character. In doing so, he emphasizes their intimate anonymity and semantic independence within this new landscape and embraces the projective nature of his paintings, and very skillful in choosing the moment or detail to paint.

Hope

Oil on Canvas

40 x 47 inches

Jarek Puczel

“The empty silence of different situations.”

Every object in my work refers to something bigger, I try to convey the idea of the multidimensional presence, which is a carrier of meanings. However I'm aware that realistic painting form easily entangles objects in the game of comparisons and associations.

It can be seductive, and also misleading. In order to avoid identification with the specific singularity of depiction, I reduce painting form, trying to express an intimate anonymity, so that viewers can reflect their own emotions and thoughts in my work. Such interactivity and openness is important to me.

I try to find the state of balance between the sensuality of the message and the transparency of the ideas that should be revealed.

“An important area of knowing myself.”

My artistic research began with the idea of life conceived as an illusion, and the world as a kind of movie, in which different realities are mixed together. You can see through my paintings that the most important for me are the feelings, all these subtle connections between people.

Of course, I am referring to my current emotions and thoughts, but also experiencing these captured in the works of art and pop culture movies, music… So I play between realities.

Art is a cutting edge activity, an important area of knowing myself. And probably the best part of me I can give to the others. The human figure is reduced there to his/her main psychological features. I think that such an old-time “iconic heritage” can be paradoxically regarded as a conceptual basis.

I like this approach because representing a soul has a little to do with the topical and ordinary representation. So I avoid sketching every detail, also avoid redundant colors, minimizing and intensifying my creation as much as I can.

I’m an intuitive painter and instinctively use this sense at the initial stage of work. If some topic moves me I try to collect the stuff related, Then combine certain elements and reduce others to highlight the main idea important for me. People usually find in my work their own emotions and thoughts. These are very uplifting reactions for me  because I much care about “openness” of the structure in my paintings.

Jarek Puczel

Exit 1–2

Oil on Canvas

34.25 x 53.5 inches

“Flavours and colours.”

The hope is that viewers can reflect on their own emotions and thoughts in my work. The second reason is my tendency to merge different art forms... the synthesis of the composition is easier when the face is treated like a compact stain of colour. Thus, both psychological and painting issues meet here. Showing your deeper emotions in painting is inevitable, even if you would rather hide or suppress them somehow.

Although you decide what to show and what elements should be reduced, absence is as important as presence. Sometimes, an element that you are not aware of in your life, appears on the canvas, and only there can it be perceived.

Jarek Puczel

Blow up

Oil on Canvas

34.25 x 52.5 inches

“Manages to evoke an air of the cinematic.”

key lighting, dramatic angles and arrested motion... He apparently sees the world in a different way. What he does is demonstrating scenes from some parallel world in his paintings.

A touch of minimalism in the works of Jarek Puczel is very clear; it bears a touch of simplicity but with a profound foreground. “Presented object belongs to something bigger, that determines or expresses it. Something belongs to the world of matter. Most often a sensual element, like hair or flowers, and something is already a sign of belonging to a larger, undefined space.”

In Puczel’s work, absence does not mean lacking. His use of negative space illustrates the intangible parts of the human experience that are more deeply felt than seen.

He explains, “I try to express something about sensing, not only through the conscious or rational part of us, but also through our collective unconscious.” By doing so, he is able to capture something as deep as the human experience.

While much can be depicted with the human form, Puczel’s touches upon the relationship between people and their environment with flat and abstracted backgrounds. By keeping his subjects faceless, they take on an intimate anonymity. The viewer is able to relate their own experience without feeling like an intruder on someone else’s private moments.

Jarek Puczel Hideaway

Oil on Canvas

36 x 47 inches

Oil on Canvas

29.5 x 47.65 inches

Jarek Puczel

Studio 1–2

“That outside world doesn't matter.”

Puczel’s works created during this period inevitably bear marks of sadness and nostalgia for something that has passed, evoking a transformative experience.

To a large extent, I consciously minimise facial features, avoiding man's individual aspects and emphasise their 'intimate anonymity'. To weaken the identification with a specific realistic embodiment, he reduces the painted form on his canvas, purposefully minimizing facial features and avoiding the individual aspects of the character. The creative process can be regarded as a talk with your 'self', and an important source of personal.

Jarek

Puczel

Awakening

Oil on Canvas

41.35 x 47 inches

Exhibition

MAYBAUM

Transition

Location: 49 Geary Street, Suite 416 San Francisco, CA 94108

Contact: 415-658-7669

info@maybaumgallery.com

Hours: Tuesday Saturday  10:30am – 5:30pm

Parking is available at: The White House Garage, 223 Sutter Street Union Square Garage, 333 Post Street

Public transportation: Accessible by Montgomery BART or Muni stations.

Transition