Interior with Painter 2022

Curator: We're looking at "Interior with Painter" by Iwo Zaniewski, an acrylic on canvas completed in 2022. Editor: Wow, it practically vibrates! The color choices are bold, almost violently juxtaposed. Is this a painting about energy, about visual overload? Curator: It's an intense piece. Zaniewski seems to be channeling Fauvist and Expressionist approaches here, evident in the non-naturalistic colors and distorted forms. It gives the work a raw, emotional charge. Editor: The 'painter' is almost engulfed by their surroundings! Like their inner creative chaos is literally spilling out onto the canvas... or is the canvas here the entire room? And look at the way they use color to define the different planes. There is the flatness reminiscent of Matisse and his interiors. Curator: Precisely. And think about the concept of an interior. What’s presented is not just the physical space, but also a psychological landscape, maybe even the artist’s creative process itself, externalized onto the canvas for us to see. It reminds us that abstraction also can depict inner emotion and is not all form. Editor: I’m also intrigued by how he abstracts the figure. It dissolves into the chaotic background, suggesting a merging of the artist and the act of painting, dissolving into its context. Is this, the "real interior", maybe what he or she see at work? Curator: I think it points to a fluid, constantly shifting relationship between the artist, the environment, and the work being created. What looks chaotic initially resolves into a coherent visual language if we allow the work to act directly on us. This reminds me of how dreams organize themselves; chaos resolving in a weird but potent language we can tap into. Editor: So, we have the "Interior," a depiction of external space, a metaphor for internal states, and of the creative activity... so we could perhaps say that Zaniewski opens up all kinds of different ways for the viewers to think of both painting and the act of viewing art. Curator: Exactly! It reminds us how deeply interconnected the different parts of the artwork actually are: the emotions of the painter, the scene in which that painter exists, the painted outcome. The magic emerges through the interconnection of it all.