Friseurfuge 2022

Lech Jankowski made this painting, Friseurfuge, with who knows what, some time in the recent past. The palette is so restrained, almost monochromatic, a dance of grays and whites punctuated by these mysterious dark, vertical forms. There's a definite materiality here, a surface built up, maybe scraped back. You can almost feel the texture under your fingertips. Those dark marks, are they combs? Ladders? Some kind of weird, abstracted hairdressing tool? They slice through the hazy atmosphere, creating a spatial tension. It's not quite flat, not quite deep, more like a stage set, or a memory of a place. It puts me in mind of Morandi, the way he took humble, everyday objects and transformed them into something monumental and strange. It's a reminder that painting isn't about answers, but about questions, about the endless possibilities of seeing.